Program gets female students into science

The students' creativity often "amazes us", said Zhou, showing a video on his phone of Beijing girl Bai Zixi setting up a simple lab at home and testing 17 oil film degrading materials over three months. Du Bin from Xinjiang Corps Senior High School designed a "mechanical fish" plan which, optimized by an engineering team, became an integrated smart floating island with water quality monitoring and filtration functions.

"Sensors are placed in the fish's eyes, purification plants are planted in the fish's tail and an aeration device is placed in the fish's belly — such interdisciplinary thinking is something even adult engineers might not think of," Zhou said.

Implementation of the project was full of challenges. Du said, "Drawing the design diagram made the fish-shaped device look cool, but actually connecting pipes and planting vegetation made me realize the complexities of buoyancy calculations and the stability of solar power supply."

Beijing's Bai Yunhui shared an incident involving "plant rescue". The team mistakenly placed large hydroponic plants in small flowerpots, risking root rot. "Ultimately, we performed surgery-like procedures, cutting the plants in half, watering them daily, and watching them rejuvenate, which was immensely rewarding," she said.