A Virginia high school freshman named Heman Bekele was looking for a fun science experiment and ended up making a soap with the aim of treating skin cancer and had been crowned “America’s Top Young Scientist”!
One of the biggest challenges, Bekele said, was to keep the soap from flaking into pieces. He ended up using a mixture of moisturizer, coconut oil and organic shea butter to accomplish that. The process taught the teen the value of persistence, Bekele said; one major challenge was finding the right combination of ingredients to ensure the soap held together without flaking into pieces.
Herman won $25,000 after winning this year’s 3M Young Scientist Challenge with his idea for making a soap to treat skin cancer with the idea he got from memories of people working long hours outside under the glaring sun in Ethiopia, his native country.
In the future, he hopes to launch a nonprofit organization to distribute his soap in low-income communities.