Science competition finalists go public

Public day allows high school students to present their projects

WASHINGTON — Forty finalists from this year’s Intel Science Talent Search, the nation’s long-running precollege science competition, chatted up hundreds of visitors who dropped by the National Geographic Society on March 11 to learn more about the students’ research.

Marian Bechtel, a finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search, demonstrates a new mine detector with two microphones that listen for the sound of mines vibrating underground.