Grayson Rosenberger, a 15-yr old from Nashville, TN, won the inaugural Bubble Wrap Competition for Young Inventors sponsored by processor/converter Sealed Air Corp. (Elmwood Park, NJ) and administered by the National Museum of Education. His winning invention used bubble wrap cushioning to create a low-cost cosmetic covering for prosthetic limbs and earned him a $10,000 savings bond. Sealed Air’s founders invented bubble wrap in 1960.

Rosenberger was one of nearly 800 students in grades 5 through 8 who entered the contest. Using a heat gun to mold bubble wrap cushioning around the steel rod of a prosthetic limb to give it muscle-like tone and shape, Rosenberger was able to turn a basic artificial leg into a more life-like limb so that amputees would feel more confident and less self-conscious.

Rosenberger, along with the competition’s other two finalists, won a trip to New York city. The second and third place winners, who also received $5,000 and $3,000 respectively in savings bonds, were Megan Guerrero, 13, of San Angelo, TX, for a 3-D puzzle of the Empire State Building; and Alex Chalcraft, 13, of Gilbert, AZ, for a chore chart in which children popped bubbles after completing a chore.—[email protected]