Azia: Hey guys, it is Thursday, April 14, and today, Kobe Bryant hangs up his jersey. Plus, we are hunting for hurricanes. I am Azia Celestino, and Channel One News starts right now.
Tom is here to help us start off the show with a story at the White House, where kids are showing off some incredible inventions and projects at the annual Science Fair.
Tom: That is right. Since 2010, President Obama has invited hundreds of young people to the White House for this event, and it is all to encourage them to get involved with STEM subjects.
From saving the planet to the fight against Ebola, the president had a packed agenda yesterday — not hearing from his top advisers but from about 130 students competing at the annual White House Science Fair.
President Obama: I have just been able to see the unbelievable ingenuity and passion and curiosity and brain power of America’s next generation.
Tom: There were robots for heavy lifting and underwater discovery, displays that wowed the president, some creations even intended to save lives.
Student: People go crazy for it!
Tom: Like this small robot designed to replace filters in mine shafts.
Jacob Bosarge: Saves lives overall, having robots that can do this instead of having to send a human to hazardous conditions.
Tom: This invention to help America's war heroes:Simon, Maya and Grayson are middle schoolers from Colorado; they built a prosthetic leg from scratch.
Kids: We want to make it individualized for each specific veteran because Kyle, he used to hike and camp in the mountains.
Tom: Hiking and even more.
Kids: This piece slides into the long board, and then Kyle would then be wearing this, and it slides in so that he can ride.
Hannah Herbst: It spins that generator and then lights up those lights you see right there.
Tom: Hannah Herbst also wanted to use her extraordinary smarts to help a friend, her pen pal in Ethiopia who has no electricity. The 15-year-old's invention can be placed in water to generate power and light.
Hannah: I had to convert that crazy cloud of electrons into DC power, or direct current, which is a straight line of electrons. And to do that, I used a bridge rectifier, which you see right there.
Tom: Some of the science this year even turned into business. At 9 years old, Jacob Leggete is a 3D printing entrepreneur…
Jacob Leggete: You can make whatever you want.
Tom: …turning his inventions into cash.
Jacob: These are 3D printed bubble wands.
Tom: Fun and games for many of those who showed up, but it is programs like this science fair the White House hopes will create future thinkers for years to come. Tom Hanson, Channel One News.
Azia: Thanks, Tom. Okay, coming up, an NBA great says good-bye to the game.
Azia: Time to take a look at what else is making news today, and we are checking back in on the situation in Flint, Michigan. If you remember, that is the city where residents were drinking contaminated water, causing national controversy. Well, now researchers say that the water is still unsafe to drink, but there are some improvements.
Researchers say the water in Flint, Michigan, still contains dangerously high levels of lead.
Professor Marc Edwards: No one should be drinking unfiltered Flint water.
Azia: Researchers retested the water in March after the city switched back to Detroit's water source, Lake Huron. They compared the new samples to water from August of last year, when the Flint River was the main source. Lead levels decreased but remain above federal standards. The problem now is the lead deposits in the pipes, and that problem may take up to two years to clear out.
Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant closed out his 20-year career last night, shooting hoops for the last time at the Staples Center. The game was sold out, tickets going for as much as $25,000. It was Bryant’s 1,556th game of his career.
The five-time champion averaged 25 points per game throughout his career and is the third leading scorer in NBA history. He once scored 81 points in a single game. And even before retiring, Bryant was signing shoes for his fans, leaving them with a little piece of history.
Okay, after the break, a storm is brewing as Keith Kocinski takes on monster hurricanes.
Azia: In honor of Earth Month, we have been bringing you an in-depth series about climate change and how it impacts us. This past week we focused on extreme weather. Today Keith Kocinski is hunting hurricanes, weather's most ferocious and dominant storms.
Keith: Right now we are at about 8,000 feet, and we are dealing with a lot of turbulence and heavy rain. That is because we are right in the middle of the storm.
So right now we are going to the MacDill Air Force Base here in Tampa. And it is about 2 a.m., and I am just waking up at the moment. But I am excited because we are about to take a plane ride straight into a hurricane.
Yep, I said hurricane. You are probably thinking, “You can't fly a plane into one of the Earth's most enormous and destructive forces!” Well, that is exactly what I am doing with these guys, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Hunters.
Crew member: Where the Top Gun music kicks in, right here.
Keith: Whenever a hurricane brews in the Atlantic Ocean, this crew is on alert, ready to fly straight into the mouth of this monster with a plane designed especially for this.
Some people may say you guys are crazy for going into a hurricane, but it seems like you guys have a pretty good safety record.
Justin: Well, we've never lost a plane; we’ve never lost a life flying into these storms. People would say we're crazy, but we train hard; we know what we're doing. We're all very experienced, and obviously, we don't take things lightly.
Keith: We flew around 1,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean on an 11-hour round-trip flight to rendezvous with a massive hurricane named Gonzalo. A hurricane, also known as a typhoon or cyclone in other parts of the world, is a tropical storm over warm water that gets help from the Earth’s rotation and low crosswinds.
The storm becomes a hurricane when the winds reach 74 miles per hour, but they can pack winds of more than 200 miles per hour and span over 1,000 miles across. That is about the distance between Kansas City and Washington, D.C.
We finally made it to the storm, bouncing around and even getting sick along the way. Then — an eerie calm.
Right now, we are in the calmest part of the storm, known as the eye. Sometimes the eye gives you a false sense that the storm is over, but in reality the second part of the storm is just about to begin. Boom — we are back to the craziness.
Why are these missions so crucial to the people on the ground and those who are in the path of the storm?
Justin: The data that we gather, the in situ data, the in-the-storm data, you can't get from anywhere else — you can't get from a satellite, you can't get from a buoy.
Keith: Hurricanes account for millions of dollars in damage every year. That damage comes from an arsenal of high winds, heavy rain, storm surge, lightning, and sometimes hurricanes even spawn tornadoes. And scientists say we could be in for bigger, badder storms because of climate change. Just last year we saw the strongest hurricane ever recorded. Patricia's wind speeds topped at 215 miles per hour.
Deke Arndt: There's still quite a bit of research to be done on whether we expect to see more and more frequent hurricanes or more hurricanes in a given average hurricane season, but there tends to be agreement that the hurricanes that we will see on average will be stronger in a warmed world.
Keith: These storms feed off warm water, and over the last century, ocean surface temperatures have gone up by around a tenth of a degree each decade, and experts say hurricanes could travel further north more often because of climate change. That is why flying through these massive storms is so important, because of what these scientists can learn.
We see all this, different instruments, different technology — what does all this do?
Rich: What you're standing on is the most sophisticated weather research aircraft in the world.
Keith: And these things, called dropsondes. And just like it sounds, they are dropped out of the plane while in the hurricane. They send data back to the plane about things like wind speed, barometric pressure, and they are tracked by GPS. They help the scientists make more accurate predictions.
How does it make you feel that you may save some lives by doing this?
Justin: You fly a rough storm, and you get beat up pretty good, but you know you're not doing it in vain. You're doing it because there's people on the ground that matter. There’s people on the ground that need to evacuate, and it definitely leaves you with a sense of pride when you land and you can feel like you’ve changed somebody's life that day.
Keith: Keith Kocinski, Channel One News.
Azia: Now here is a quiz for you guys. Hurricanes run for nearly half the year — true or false? The answer is at ChannelOne.com.
All right, guys, that is all for now. We will see you right back here tomorrow.
2 | Page