A Farmington teenager hopes her invention can help change the world.
She’s targeted gum: the chewy, candy most of us don’t give a lot of thought about. And her idea just won her a big award.
That teen inventor is an eighth grader at Irving Robbins Middle School.
Hannah Zink set out on a mission to create a new gum that among other things is biodegradable.
“I wanted to make sure you swallow it so there’s no litter created by gum,” says Zink.
Zink says most regular gums are made up of a type of plastic that doesn’t easily break down.
They can also be messy and hard to clean up if someone spits the gum on a sidewalk or sticks it somewhere.
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So the 13-year-old spent the past few months cooking up dozens of different recipes.
“On top of her homework and other activities, she’s definitely been putting her time into figuring out and testing all her batches,” says Andy Zink, Hannah’s father.
She finally arrived at Test 36.
Like any proud inventor she’s not giving away all her secrets including how it’s made.
But she will say it’s a mix of tapioca starch, glycerin, and cane sugar.
This weekend she got to present her creation at the annual National Invention Convention in Washington, D.C. along with hundreds of other students from across the country.
“Even when she went into the school competition, she just did it for fun,” says Julie Zink, Hannah’s mother.
Zink ended up winning the “Best Agricultural Invention.”
She says her work is not done, as she tries to improve the recipe to make it more stretchy and chewy like gum.
Zink hopes maybe one day it could end up on store shelves.
“I think it would be really cool to say I did something that’s actually people are buying and selling and enjoying,” says Hannah Zink.
Zink says another benefit of her invention is the cost. She says a batch of Test 36 runs about 30-cents, much less than a regular pack of gum.
We’re told there were several winners in the competition who were from the state.
