The traditional defense of fantastic projects took place at the NSU School of Advanced Studies Summer School

Every year, about 800 schoolchildren from all over Russia and the CIS countries gather at the Summer School of the Novosibirsk Specialized Educational Scientific Center (NSU). The defense of fantastic projects, which took place on August 14, is one of the highlights of the program. The students present the boldest and most unusual science fiction ideas, while it is important to adhere to the schedule: each of the ten presented projects is given 5 minutes for the presentation, followed by 3 minutes for questions. The jury evaluates not only the idea itself and its scientific basis but also the presentation, the ability to tell about the project interestingly, and the participant’s charisma.

— If the project is “fun,” it is important during the presentation to stretch the scientific vision over the task as much as possible; if it is serious — treat it as real, — explained the event organizer Ivan Maslakov, Deputy Director of the Summer School of Physics. According to him, children gain valuable experience in public speaking and a demo version of a real scientific conference from participating in this format. The enthusiasm of the boys and girls was encouraged not only by the experience but also by prizes for the best projects and questions.

In the concept of defenses, participants were offered to play out real problems using science fiction and humor, but without going beyond the bounds of scientific knowledge. For example, two participants proposed to cook “Borscht from the World Ocean”. They calculated how much carrot, onion, beet, potato, and tomato paste would be needed, and even figured out how to heat billions of tons of water using the Dyson sphere and solar energy. In the end, the guys admitted honestly: “We chose borscht because it is delicious.” During the project discussion, jury members asked practical questions—for example, whether a spoon was needed to stir such a dish. The participants responded that the density of their “soup” was so high that ordinary ocean currents would not be sufficient. The project even proposed using the resulting dish to combat hunger, as the amount of prepared borscht could feed hundreds of millions of people.

Other projects were no less unusual. Two schoolchildren presented “The Ugly Duckling Theorem”. They demonstrated with mathematical examples and everyday situations that perceiving an object as “unsuitable” depends on comparison: a thing or a person seems strange until they find their “flock,” their group, where they look ordinary. As an illustration, the students gave a real-life example: in the morning, many people cannot find two identical socks and take any — because, as the authors discovered according to their “theorem,” any two socks still turn out to be the same. The project smoothly transitioned from the school situation to reasoning about perception bias, concluding that we are all “the same until someone is compared to everyone else.”

The project attracted particular interest “Bee Keeper” — the idea to create a down jacket made of bees. According to the author’s calculations, about 300 thousand bees weighing around 30 kilograms in total would be needed for the jacket, which by moving around the wearer would generate about 3 kilojoules of energy — comparable to the power of a household heater. Such a product, by estimate, would cost approximately 150 thousand rubles plus 10 thousand rubles annually for bee maintenance, but in return — personal protection, up to 300 kilograms of honey per year, and, with successful training, a chance to take flight. During the presentation of this project, there was real excitement: students lined up to ask the author questions. While answering, the pupil even expanded the initial idea: after discussion, thoughts appeared about creating a “fly jacket” with flies, and a “mosquito jacket” with mosquitoes. One of the students asked what the jury recognized as the funniest question: inquiring about “insurance in case the bees fly away.”

Alongside the playful projects in the defense, there were many serious ideas. For instance, one of the students presented a project “Energy Generation from Earthquakes” — a system of membrane sensors that convert seismic ground vibrations into electricity for emergency warning systems in earthquake-prone regions. As the host noted, this development received an international grant from Japan and is dedicated to the real search for new energy sources.

Another substantial project included “Manufacturing various types of fuel using examples from science fiction”. The student analyzed fantastic technologies from books and films, trying to find real analogs. For example, she examined engineer Los’s starship from Alexei Tolstoy’s novel “Aelita,” Jules Verne’s submarine “Nautilus” from the novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” and the photon planetary ship “Khius” from the Strugatsky brothers’ story “The Land of Crimson Clouds,” creating “technical passports” for these fantastic devices and assessing how scientifically grounded and feasible they were in reality. Each type of fuel was assigned a “quality passport” based on real gasoline criteria — detonation resistance, oxidation stability, fractional composition — as well as an evaluation of the scientific justification of the idea, the existence of a real prototype, and how safe it would be to use such fuel today. The analysis began with the most recognizable example — Neznaika’s carbonated car, which ran on carbon dioxide from lemonade.

The project deserves a separate mention “The Alarming Formula”. The student proposed to consider anxiety as a kind of physical field and derived a personal anxiety coefficient “AC,” which depends on a person’s natural predisposition, stress level, surrounding environment, lifestyle, and the distance to their loved ones. A technology for implementing the idea was also devised: an elastic band that adapts to the shape of the head, equipped with sensors tracking muscle tension, pulse, and heartbeat, and the “Leaf” system—a kind of anxiety button that, depending on the anxiety level, activates calming videos or sounds, offers grounding techniques, and at a critical anxiety level calls a loved one or notifies the workplace that the user needs a day off.

Among other projects were “Application of agrogel to improve the cultivation characteristics of narrow-leaved loach” — a fairy tale about a little tree that learns to retain moisture in a dry steppe; “The law of universal attraction to sweets” — a playful formula for the force with which sweets attract a person, depending on the distance to the kitchen; “Portable Nuclear Reactor” — the idea is to fit a working reactor into a backpack to charge a phone and laptop on a hike; and “Development of an algorithm to evade the deputy principal in the hallways” — a model of school corridors in the form of a graph with the calculation of the safest route between lessons.

All these ideas showed that the kids’ imagination can be both humorous and science-oriented.

Based on the performances, the jury determined the top three winners. The first place was awarded to the project Sofya Zerchikova’s “Production of Various Types of Fuel Based on Examples from Science Fiction”. Second place was awarded Alisa Medvedko with the project “Beekeeper”. The third place goes to Anastasia Suchko, project author “The Alarm Formula”. In addition, audience questions were noted: the funniest question was asked by Yuri Kalinin (“bee insurance”), and the most scientific question was recognized as David Khoroshevsky.

Thus, the defense of fantastic projects at the Specialized Educational and Scientific Center of Novosibirsk State University allowed schoolchildren not only to fantasize but also to delve deeper into science by presenting in front of real experts. A joke coexisted with a serious idea, and the main point was that a fantastic project is not so much a fabrication as a way to look at a scientific problem from an unexpected angle.