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there was no limit to what I could accomplish.
    I could tell I was getting better at it too. My confidence was growing. My mind felt like a powerful weapon I could set loose on any problem.
    When one of my favorite beaches was closed due to pollution, I saw how local officials had to lug all this expensive equipment to find out what was going on in the water. Not only were the tests expensive, but the equipment wasn’t always readily available.
    Fresh in my mind was my conversation about crabbing with Uncle Ted and how the pollution in the Chesapeake Bay had killed off so many of the crabs.
    There has to be a better way.
    Based on everything I had learned studying creeks, I thought I could come up with a solution. I had a feeling that a better indicator of pollution might be found in how bioluminescent organisms, those tiny organisms that emit light, react to contaminants. I began culturing bioluminescent bacteria in the only room in the house that had no windows—the bathroom. After a few weeks, I had so many glowing organisms in there that my mom could read a book without turning the lights on.
    By exposing the different organisms to various levels of contaminants, I was able to show that the more pollution the bioluminescent organisms took up, the duller their light became. I had decided to name this year’s school project “A Bright Detective: Can Vibrio Fischeri Detect Bioavailable Water Pollutants in the Stony Creek Watershed?” Now that I had a year of experience under my belt, I felt confident that I could have another good showing at my school’s science fair, and I did. For the second straight year, I came away with first overall at the Anne Arundel County Regional Science and Engineering Fair.
    Two years in a row I had won a major award. In the heavily competitive world of science fairs, I was fast earning a reputation as someone to keep an eye out for.
    While I was working on better ways to detect pollution, Luke, who was now a freshman in high school and was still in the science fair game, was also knee-deep in water. His project was genius. It examined acid mine drainage’s negative effects on the environment and wildlife and was able to come up with a real-world solution. It was his best project yet.

    My seventh-grade science fair presentation, “A Bright Detective: Can Vibrio Fischeri Detect Bioavailable Water Pollutants in the Stony Creek Watershed?”
    Luke had designed a cell that allowed him to test four different variables. Given those variables, he was able to create the perfect cell for any stream according to its specific parameters. Not only did it have the potential to change the way we treat the pollution in these streams and save millions of gallons of fresh drinking water, but it was also much easier to implement than the current limestone techniques because his method required less cost and manpower.
    Luke titled his project “Electrochemical Remediation of AMD—A Solution to Acid Mine Pollution?”
    Luke and I planned to enter our projects into our first nonregional science fair, the International Sustainable World (Energy, Engineering, and Environmental) Project Olympiad (or I-SWEEEP) in Houston, Texas. Now that I had developed the confidence I needed with my public speaking, I thought this time would be easier, but I also knew the competition would be a lot stiffer.
    I-SWEEEP was one of the largest environmental science fair competitions in the world, with 1,655 student scientists from 71 countries competing against one another. The stage at I-SWEEEP was bigger than anything I had ever seen in Maryland. And the competition was just unbelievable.
    It was my first time at a national award ceremony, and I wasn’tfocused as much on winning because I didn’t think I had a chance. My goal was to soak everything in and hopefully use that knowledge in future projects. It was clear that everything at I-SWEEEP was on a higher level—from the