In a time of increasing uncertainty worldwide, mainly because of what the pandemic has brought with it, diversifying the daily lives of individuals and societies on many levels, the new generation’s stride towards goals, sometimes against the realism of everyday life, keeps the hope for a auspicious future.
The road to success
“There are always many failures behind a success, but it is these driving forces that will push you towards success. “Essentially you follow trial and error, that is, you try, you experiment and if you fail you try something else and move on.” With this phrase, 16-year-old Dimitris Deliakidis, who won second place in the pan-Hellenic STEM STARS GREECE competition and his participation in May in the largest international science competition International Science and Engineering Fairto be held in Atlanta, USA, sets the path to achieving a goal.
In the competition STEM STARS GREECE Students 14-18 years old participate, with a special inclination and talent in natural sciences, technology, engineering or mathematics, in which the 16-year-old has already been distinguished through student competitions. “My participation is part of Enviromental Engineering, Environmental Engineering. The device I made records parameters of the quality status of the water element (seas, lakes, rivers, etc.). It is addressed to many sectors and there is no body that in real time gives these values ​​which we can then use to understand the quality of seawater. It can be used by fishermen, amateurs and professionals who will connect to the internet and receive, see these prices. Turbidity, for example, is an important element of snorkeling. Construction is divided into two parts. The first is placed permanently in the water held by a weight and receives the values ​​of temperature, pH and turbidity which it then transmits wirelessly to the second part of the construction which is on land and which receives and posts them on the internet and creates automatically , charts as a function of time. The information provided is extremely useful. “PH, for example, is inextricably linked to phenomena such as eutrophication and acidification, while temperature is a factor that affects many more”, explains to APE-MPE the first grade student of the 4th GEL Alexandroupolis.
The originality of the construction
With the creative momentum that characterizes youth and the belief that there are always opportunities for active participation in shaping a better reality, Dimitris chose to build a device that, as he says, facilitates the work and life of people as the prices he receives are linked between others with phenomena that create problems for both humans (skin diseases) and organisms at sea.
“What applies to Greece today is that sampling is done, four times per swimming season, specifically as defined by KELPNO. The values ​​obtained, for example from Alexandroupolis, are sent to Epirus for analysis and as we understand this is a time consuming process and we can not have in real time the changes of pH and all these values, which are necessary to prevent some phenomena . From what I know in our country there is no corresponding device while abroad it may have been implemented but not in this way. Abroad there are provisions that count superficially. My own construction can measure these values ​​at any depth (some phenomena are not perceived on the surface), so I consider this to be the originality of the model. “Knowing that there is no body that can perceive in real time the evolution of phenomena such as eutrophication and acidification, I created this device that at very low cost allows them to be prevented, acting as an alarm station.”
The vision that becomes action
How easy is it for a teenager to come up with ideas, and to see them flush it out, it’s really fun. “In January we were informed about the conduct of the April competition, I decided to participate and then it was essentially I did the brain storming to find an idea. Implementation requires knowledge of engineering, computer science, while the sciences of physics, chemistry and biology are also involved. I had to deal a lot with the laws of engineering on how to create a structure that can enter the water, adjustable for any depth, which is functional, while certainly requires perfect programming knowledge. How to choose the right board, how to get into the construction that will receive the values ​​with the sensors to then transmit them wirelessly, how to program the construction because several lines of code have been written for this function, all this requires programming knowledge which in fact combine two or three languages, so if there is no perfect knowledge we have an issue. Physics is used for buoyancy, how the construction will float, how it will be fixed to the bottom, while from biology and chemistry I gained knowledge about the purpose of using the sensors. Having no one to teach me the required knowledge for programming that is outside the school context, with a love for the specific sciences and construction, I relied exclusively on the study of the relevant literature, Greek and foreign. It is equally difficult that I did not have the opportunity to exchange views to answer any questions that arose. Maybe it was partly lonely but you know in the end it is very liberating, because you can do something completely alone. I would definitely always like some help but when you do something on your own the feeling is maybe a little different. However, the family also played a decisive role because no one is born and says “I want to deal with it”, there must be the appropriate stimuli and my family took care to offer them to me from a young age, initially with construction toys. “My parents gave me the stimuli, they supported me psychologically and taught me not to give up, and even if they could not actually follow what I was doing, they were always by my side.”
The loneliness of the competitive effort in no way characterizes the daily life of the teenager. “I love sports. I play basketball in a team. I really like movies, I go out with my friends. In general, I believe that I maintain a balance in all this and I definitely put the appropriate weight in each occupation depending on the case. “Now that I’m dealing with the competition, maybe I should have sacrificed some things to get to this point, but definitely everything has to be in the program to keep your mental health intact.”
The field of sciences, robotics and artificial intelligence in general is the future goal of Dimitris Deliakidis and leaves in the future the answer as to whether his dreams and goals will be realized inside or outside Greece. “Ideas come and go and I do not have an absolute purpose at the moment. I know I want to get involved in the sciences of robotics and engineering and in general how you can create something that will make people’s lives easier. I will move on these axes and I hope to achieve it. For me, success is to be able to realize what you want. Many times you can reach the goal you had set but you feel the need that you have to move on, and more … ‘Besides, I believe that there is no absolute success and it is not possible to deify everything we do. We reach a point but there is always a lot of room for improvement to reach a perfect degree, which may not exist … “.
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