It’s called the Guardian Helmet.
With the help of an application on your cellphone, it can track how fast a person is riding on a bike and notify someone if it detects a fall.
It was created by Adam Hamdaqa, a Grade 7 student at Pierrefonds Comprehensive High School.
“I had broken my arm, 90 degrees almost, last year in the summer – I was on my bike,” said Hamdaqa. “When I got to the hospital, I was thinking ‘What if?’ – a small word with a big meaning. ‘What if I was far from home? What if I didn’t have my helmet? What if I didn’t have my phone?’”
The invention recently took first prize at Hydro-Quebec’s Montreal Regional Science and Technology Fair, earning Adam a spot at the Super Expo-Sciences provincial finals over the weekend.
“I feel like I should patent it before anybody takes the idea, because I feel like Apple is gonna do it and I do not want that to happen,” he said laughing.
The guardian helmet was among 97 projects on display at the expo.
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Students from across the province, aged 12 to 20, showed off their brilliant science projects.
They touched on numerous themes from the environment, education and health, to even Montreal potholes.
Kovalchuk and fellow student Cynthia Tun created a self-healing concrete called Regen-Rock.
“Living in Montreal, you can’t drive anywhere without hitting a pothole, a crack in the road, or seeing any construction going on,” said Thomas Kovalchuk, a Grade 11 student at Kells Academy. “So we wanted to figure out a way to prevent all this construction – hopefully make concrete structures last even longer.”
Students showed off their projects throughout the weekend and even got to pitch their ideas to municipal and provincial officials.
Quebec Energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon made the rounds Sunday morning, listening to students’ innovations.
Awards were handed out to the best ideas on Sunday afternoon.
‘When you like science, it’s not like you’re the star of a sports (team),” said Luc Langevin, a spokesperson for the expo. “As a society, we don’t push those people to go ahead. So this is the kind of opportunity to receive feedback and show that they’re good at something.”
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