8-Year-Old Learns Joy of Inventing : Education: Student used lessons in creative thinking to design a ‘puddle-detecting cane.’

It was a wet and windy night when 8-year-old Lillian Lukas had her brainstorm. She was out walking with her mother when she noticed a blind person having trouble avoiding puddles on the sidewalk. That observation was the beginning of what eventually became a prize-winning invention: the “Puddle Detecting Cane.”

Her invention was good enough to win Invent-America’s nationally sponsored competition, and the prototype of her Puddle Detecting Cane is in the Smithsonian Institution.

But just how do you make a puddle-detecting cane? Lillian turned to her dad for help. Scott Lukas is a doctor with a strong background in electronics, and he got Lillian started with a kit designed to help children understand the basics of electronic circuitry. He taught her how to solder and helped with some of the sawing and drilling.

Lillian hit on the idea of embedding two electrical contacts in the base of a wooden cane. When immersed in water, the contacts complete a circuit, which sends a signal up to a buzzer and warns the blind person of a puddle.

Among other entries in the national contest, Lillian’s cane competed against a motorized wheelchair ramp, a disposable frying pan, musical rain gear and a beeper that keeps tabs on wandering toddlers.

A recent study released by the Department of Education reports that in math and science, children in the United States are lagging behind their counterparts in Canada, Great Britain, Japan and South Korea.

But don’t let the second-graders at the Dallin School in Arlington, Mass., hear you say that. That’s where Lillian was attending when she developed her invention. Thanks to her teacher, Karen Doliber, Lillian got an early start in creative thinking.

Doliber uses study guides and information from Invent-America, a national educational program that encourages children to think creatively.

“This program really helps the children with their thinking skills,” Doliber said as she set out a variety of antique tools on a low table for the students to examine. There is an ice chipper, a shoe stretcher, a stove-top toaster and a portable scale. As the students try to guess the original function of each tool, they’re learning to analyze, question and think creatively. “Hopefully they will take these skills into everyday life, in other problems they will have to solve,” Doliber said.

She encourages her second-graders to be inventors, too, and in the process they’re learning a lot more than just creative thinking. “If we start a nation of children at a very young age feeling they can make a difference, and they develop thinking skills, we may rekindle that spirit of inventing in America,” Doliber said.

Lillian acknowledges her teacher as the one who got her started inventing. “She helped me to keep on trying different ideas--like if this one didn’t work, try another one and just add something,” she said.

Success in the national contest has resulted in a shelf full of trophies and medals. “I won a state and a school award, and then I went to Washington because I won the regional,” Lillian said. “And I got a trophy for that, and I got a gold medal for the national.” She even met President Bush.

But all the recognition wasn’t why she designed the puddle-detecting cane. “I just built this to help the blind people. . . . I just want to give the parts to the blind schools, and they can make theirs themselves.”

Lillian and her father continue to work on improved versions of the cane. They’re developing a sensor that will work on a folding cane. And they’ve added an additional beeper that goes off if the cane is dropped, to aid in locating the cane.

With the contests over, Lillian is back to being just a regular kid, playing with her little sister, practicing her violin and working on projects with her dad. But whether it’s music, art or inventions, for Lillian Lukas, it all adds up to the joy of discovery.