Jack Grover
8th Grade, Riverside STEM Academy
Riverside, CA
Sprayable Hydrogels for Preventing the Rekindling of Wildfires
Working with his identical twin brother Henry, the two set out to determine whether a hydrogel could be used to stop wildfires from starting again. They tested nine gels for drying time, stickiness, hydration time and how well they cooled, and designed a sprayer for their best performing gel.
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Project Background
Jack Grover and his identical twin brother Henry nearly lost their home in a wildfire. Later, they learned that the Palisades fire was caused by the rekindling of an earlier fire that was still smoldering. The twins also learned that fire retardants contain dangerous heavy metals like arsenic and lead. “Knowing the harmful materials being dumped into our waterways and forests and residences, we wanted to make a more environmentally friendly fire retardant using a more biodegradable material, hydrogel,” Jack says.
Tactics and Results
In a previous science fair project, Jack and Henry had worked on hydrogels. They decided to see if a hydrogel could be sprayed on burned areas to stop them from catching fire again. They tested nine different hydrogels, seeing how fast they dried out at high heat in an oven, how well they stuck to leaves, and how quickly they hydrated. Their top performing gel was sodium polyacrylate, which hydrated fully in 15 minutes. Then they tested how well this hydrogel cooled hot charcoal briquettes, and found their gel cooled for much longer than water alone. Finally, with a 3D printer, they then designed a sprayer to spray their hydrogel and got it to spray well with a garden hose. Jack and Henry hope a hydrogel like theirs could help save lives and property.
Beyond the Project
Jack enjoys robotics and has had fun restoring 40-year-old robots. He’s recently gotten into old cameras and likes picking up antiques. He also likes amateur archaeology, and when he goes to Canada in the summer, he spends time unearthing “china, electronics, and glass pieces, many of which are currently residing in a small local museum dedicated to that area’s history,” he says. “Unearth a piece of china, buy a new camera and fiddle with it, fix an old robot; they all let me do something instead of just being bored all the time.”
