Lalita Prasida Sripada Srisai is a 13-year-old genius. She’s only in 9th grade, attending DPS Damanjodi, a school in a small town in the Koraput district in the Indian state of Odisha.
She won the ‘Community Impact Award’ at the Google Science Fair in California for her incredible invention. She won in the 13 to 15 year old age group and received 10,000 USD as her prize. She also has the opportunity to be supported by Google to help build her project.
Lalita created a low cost bio-absorbent based water purifier. How does it work? Surprisingly, it uses corn cobs to purify the water!
Corn cobs are incredibly absorbent, making them perfect for collecting contaminants like salts, detergents, different floating particles, coloured dyes, and even some heavy metals.