This teen materials scientist wants to save the Great Salt Lake
Sophia Zhang studied hydrogels that might ease a big lake stressor — water use for farming
Sophia Zhang, 14, has used advocacy, journalism and science to tackle a crisis facing her home state: the shrinking of Utah’s Great Salt Lake.
Courtesy of S. Zhang
Sophia Zhang is on a mission to solve an environmental crisis in her home state of Utah. The Great Salt Lake has been shrinking for decades, largely due to excess water use and climate change.
Since learning about this problem during a school project, Sophia, 14, spoke about it at the United Nations. For a news report on saving water, she interviewed scientists and government officials. And now, she has done an experiment investigating one potential fix. In her study, Sophia compared how well different hydrogels absorbed and held water. Such hydrogels could be used to conserve water in farming. And that could reduce one of the biggest stressors on the Great Salt Lake’s water supply.
An aspiring engineer, Sophia did her project as an eighth grader at Rowland Hall Middle School in Salt Lake City. Her research earned her the second place Technology Award in the 2024 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge. That competition is run by Society for Science, which also publishes Science News Explores. In this interview, Sophia shares her science fair experiences and advice.
What was your favorite part of this project?
“Making the hydrogels and sampling the hydrogels,” Sophia says. She made her materials with starch and other eco-friendly materials at home. And it was so cool “watching [each] mixture transform into a Jell-O-like substance right before my eyes,” she says. “I realized how obsessed I am with getting my hands dirty and wet in the experimental process. … It was just like cooking.”
What resources helped you complete your project?
Sophia’s mentors were local high-school science teachers. “They spent countless lunch hours … mentoring me,” she says. They taught her about organic chemistry and lent her a textbook about it. They also gave her devices to make her samples and collect data. To find a good mentor, consider people in your community, Sophia says. She connected with hers just by emailing them.
What’s the most important thing you learned during this project?
“That it’s completely normal to have experimental results that are inconsistent with what we expect in our hypothesis,” Sophia says. “It was pretty nerve-wracking to find that the experimental results were not perfectly consistent with my hypothesis. So I wondered, did my experiment go wrong?” When Sophia talked to her mentors and read more past studies, she realized the science behind her hydrogels’ behavior was simply more complex than she thought.
Any advice for science fair newbies?
“Three things: curiously observe, carefully think and courageously act,” she says. “First of all, be attentive to the world surrounding us with curiosity.” Finding problems to solve in your community is a good place to start. “Second of all, carefully deliberate the issue at hand. Study existing solutions and explore better alternative solutions.” And finally, don’t be intimidated by not knowing all the answers.
“Exploring the frontier of the unknown is risky. Sometimes we get lost. Sometimes we have to go back to zero,” Sophia says. “I encountered a few roadblocks in my research, but overcoming these roadblocks is also the most rewarding.”
