ANAIAH LAMONT
STUDENT SCIENTIST: Manasi Desai, an undergraduate chemistry student
Fingernails don’t activate touch screens—your fingers do. That’s because skin is conductive. Electricity can pass through it, but not through fingernails. It can be frustrating for people with long nails to use smartphones. So Manasi Desai, a student at Centenary College of Louisiana, came up with a solution.
Desai created a colorless nail polish using a compound called ethanolamine. This chemical is not conductive. But when it’s exposed to carbon dioxide in the air, protons—positively charged particles—in its atoms start to hop around. To a smartphone, this registers as a change in electricity.
Ethanolamine is slightly toxic. So Desai found a safer compound, taurine, with a similar effect. She is now working to perfect her formula for a polish that can turn fingernails into touch screen styluses.