James Bearden might seem to be your typical A-student. Last October, he stumbled into his school's library and noticed a brand new 3D printer sitting in a corner.
"I didn't even know about it until I came back to school. And then I didn't mess with it until about a couple months after we started," said James Bearden, Carl Junction High School student.
He'd never used a 3D printer before, so his curiosity got the best of him.
"I researched and it's, turned out not to be nearly as hard as you would think. So I just started building whatever I wanted," said Bearden.
Bearden has made several things using the printer since last fall. Right now, he's working on a strandbeest. It's a contraption that can walk and it's inspired by a dutch inventor.
"It stands like this. Right now it can't do it because there's no grip, right. I'm not done, obviously, but that will be the major thing," Bearden explained. "My dream job would be to work at the LHC in Switzerland. The Large Hadron Collider. Where they, you know, particles, accelerators, where they take the protons and they spin them around and smash them.
Bearden says his work with the 3D printer is a good starting point from which he could branch off of. He hopes his work will inspire the school to develop more tools for students to learn from.
"I would love to see engineering classes. Maybe Carl Junction sponsoring like a big, you know, like the science fairs you see in movies, like big science fairs," said Bearden.
Bearden plans to build a dragon as a final project for the 3D printer. For college, he is already waiting from a response from the top Ivy Leagues in the country.
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