Carbon- The Best Element by Michaela

Carbon- The Best Element by Michaela - May 2023 Scholarship Essay

At 8 years old, I worked on building small solar powered cars and growing crystals, analyzing their pH with my father as my lab assistant. I visualized inventions that could purify even the dirtiest water and imagined creating technology that could remove radiation and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

My interest in synthesizing STEM and nature has grown as I have become a lead counselor at “Coyote Club”, a program designed to connect kids to nature and teach ecology and survival skills. My memories in nature are saturated with carbon- using a bow drill to produce a coal and make friction fire, and purifying water with charcoal. My students in Coyote Club would ask me: “How can you get a coal from just rubbing wood, and how can that black stuff purify water?”

I was driven to learn more about the properties of carbon compounds in my Chemistry class by generating and collecting carbon dioxide through an acid-base reaction and passing the gas through a water absorber. If this was possible, what else could we do with carbon? Despite carbon’s value, carbon dioxide (CO2) has taken over our world. As the presence of CO2 has grown, so has my interest in finding innovative solutions to environmental issues.

I hope to explore the potential of developing new techniques for sequestering carbon dioxide that are based upon natural processes. When I found out about the concept of carbon capture and storing CO2 eternally into rock to protect the environment from the effects of increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, I was mystified. I became transfixed with the impact of developing these types of carbon capture methods through chemical engineering and maximizing the efficiency of chemical processes on a grand scale to reduce emissions.

Teaching kids ecology and wilderness skills as a lead counselor in Coyote Club has fueled my interest in chemical engineering to solve environmental issues in sustainability through carbon capture. I hope to not only make strides in chemical engineering, but I also hope to start my own organization similar to Coyote Club, where I can share my new knowledge of STEM and nature to inspire kids to follow their passions in the STEM field. One of the greatest gifts I can leave on this planet is paying this gift forward by showing others the importance of conserving our natural world and harnessing this connection to improve our environment.