Boy Wonder

A recent Wall Street Journal article brought to light the fact that grown adults, in the year 2011, have about as much common communication sense as the local emu at the Dallas Zoo.

That, for those of you a bit on the slow side, would be NONE.

Seems a certain Aidan Dwyer was taking a walk through the woods one fall day and happened to look up at the bare trees.  He noticed that most of the trees looked alike.  And when he arrived back home, he did some research on the Internet and discovered a mathematical concept called the Fibonacci number which underlies the structure of tree branches.

(To which I add "Had I known there was cool math behind trees, I might have attempted Calculus, Dad."  OK, not so much.)

Anyway, Aidan took this idea and ran with it, coming up with an application for the Fibonacci number that involved solar panels.  He hypothesized that arraying the panels like the leaves on a tree would lead to more sunlight being collected.

Meanwhile, his hypothesis cum national science competition winner cum Internet post turned wildfire started to mean Mr. Dwyer's research had some followers.

Some commented all about his ingenuity and intelligence, but many had concerns about the way the experiment was measured.  Their commentary tended to be so full of hatred and negativism (comparing him to an "alien" and calling his science "bad" and "impossible nonsense") that it was almost unbelievable to Aidan and his family.

But, when you factor in the next sentence, you'll see that this country is adrift in a sea of meanness that we need to steer away from.  See, this tree revelation was made when Mr. Dwyer was 11.  ELEVEN.  As in, a tween.

Fast forward to today, where our 13-year-old boy wonder has taken some of the actual, constructive feedback from his haters critics and is in hot pursuit of a revamped, properly measured version of his original project.

Undeterred by adults who never learned how to give kind feedback were clearly jealous of his genius, he has moved forward by doing chores to earn money to buy his own materials to recreate his experiment and compare it to "traditional" solar panels.

So far, the new versions are proving him right.

Hip, hip, hurray Aidan!  You have one Mom in Texas who thinks America is lucky to have such an intelligent, explorative, brilliant kid on our team.  Keep up the good work and never stop observing and dreaming about making this world a better place.

To quote you:  "I'm thinking that it could actually change the world."

Game on!