17 Year Old Pakistani Scientist

Islamabad : A 17-year-old Pakistani Student, Mohammad Shaheer Niazi, has earned himself a recognition in the scientific community after publishing his research that showed visualisation of a phenomenon called "electric honeycomb".

The high school student of Lahore College of Arts and Sciences in Lahore experimented with the phenomenon of electric honeycomb and made valuable measurements that were never made before.

He placed a layer of oil in an electric field between a pointy electrode and a flat one. High voltage between the electrodes make the ions from needle bombard the surface of oil. The ions start accumulating on the surface of non-conductor oil and the increasing pressure creates a depression allowing the ions to reach the flat electrode. The oil surface change into a stable honeycomb-like hexagonal structure.

Mr Niazi explains: "The amount of energy that goes in equals the energy that comes out and thus the flow of electricity is efficient. This way equilibrium is restored."

"Electric honeycomb perfectly demonstrates how everything in this universe is seeking equilibrium. Its hexagonal shape is the most stable structure," said Niazi.

He photographed the ion wind providing an excellent visualisation of the process and also recorded the heat changes during the process.

He first studied the electric honeycomb phenomenon as part of the International Young Physicists' Tournament held in Russia last year.

He kept working on the topic and published his research after a year.

"Your research is like your child, and you feel out of this world when it is accepted for publication," Mr Niazi tells the BBC in an interview at his residence.

The research amazed some senior scientists too. “I think it’s outstanding for so young a scientist to reproduce these results,” said Dr Alberto Perez Izquierdo, a physicist at the University of Seville in Spain.