Google Science Fair
By Asha

Google, along with partners CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American, has launched its second annual Google Science Fair, the largest online science competition in the world, open globally to students ages 13-18. Either individually or in teams of up to three people, students pose a question, develop a hypothesis and conduct science experiments to test it.

This year submissions are being accepted in 13 languages (Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Spanish and Russian). Google will be recognizing 90 regional finalists (30 from the Americas, 30 from the Asia Pacific and 30 from Europe / Middle East / Africa). From these 90, to be announced on April 1, judges will select the top 15 finalists, who will be flown to Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. for the live Google Science Fair final event on July 23, 2012.

At the finals, a panel of distinguished international judges (like Vint Cerf, Sylvia Earle and Nobel Laureates David Gross and Ada Yonath) will select top winners in each age category (13-14, 15-16, 17-18).

The Google Science Fair opened, January 12 worldwide and will accept submissions until Sunday, April 1 at 11:59 GMT (or 6:59pm ET/3:59pm PT). The prizes include a $50,000 college scholarship from Google, a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer or an internship at Google or any one of its partners.

Google.com/sciencefair has all the details.