A 12-year-old invents 'flying car'

A freshman in Donggan Middle School in Donggan City, Guangdong Province, has won first prize with his lithium-battery-drived "flying car" model in the 24th National Youth Scientific Innovation Contest.

"The car is powered by two pairs of propellers of the same rotation speed and different rotation direction, which would also balance the propellers' torsional stress at the same time," explained Xie Yanzhou, 12. "Ducted fans are another feature helping accelerate the efficiency of the propellers and protect people from getting hurt." said Xie, who is called  "the Star Inventor" at the school with his vertically-powered takeoff and landing car.

"Every time I got stuck in a traffic jam, I couldn' t help thinking about an inexpensive car which can vertically fly like a helicopter, so we could pass the cars ahead of us to avoid the annoying wait," said Xie, revealing how he was initially inspired to invent his "flying car".

He immediately thought of model planes, then he decided to make his dream come true based on his knowledge of them with help from his parents and teachers.

Xie started researching this invention during the summer of 2008. More than 300 problems occurred during this invention process.

"At that time, I kept thinking about those problems till I went to bed, and continued my experiments the moment I got up," said Xie, who has made five models. Through his hard work, Xie won the first prize in the 24th Guangdong Youth Scientific Innovation Contest in July, and was approved by architecture professor He Jingtang and other prestigious scientists.

At such a young age, Xie says he loves to make things by hand and has various model planes at home. At first, he put things together according to the pictures, but later he began to create his own. Up until now, he has successfully made eight model planes.

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