Protect this youthHeman Bekele Is TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year
“They were just dish soap, laundry detergent, and common household chemicals,” he says today of the ingredients he’d use. “I would hide them under my bed and see what would happen if I left them overnight. There was a lot of mixing together completely at random.”
But soon, things got less random. For Christmas before his 7th birthday, Heman was given a chemistry set that came with a sample of sodium hydroxide. By then, he had been looking up chemical reactions online and learned that aluminum and sodium hydroxide can together produce prodigious amounts of heat. That got him thinking that perhaps he could do the world some good. “I thought that this could be a solution to energy, to making an unlimited supply,” he says. “But I almost started a fire.”
Heman Bekele Is TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year: TIME's Kid of the Year List
Heman Bekele Is TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year: See who else made the listtime.com
Brilliant! Props to the young brother, I wish him the utmost success. White folks (the ones who get skin cancer) should be kissing his feet.Heman Bekele Is TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year
“They were just dish soap, laundry detergent, and common household chemicals,” he says today of the ingredients he’d use. “I would hide them under my bed and see what would happen if I left them overnight. There was a lot of mixing together completely at random.”
But soon, things got less random. For Christmas before his 7th birthday, Heman was given a chemistry set that came with a sample of sodium hydroxide. By then, he had been looking up chemical reactions online and learned that aluminum and sodium hydroxide can together produce prodigious amounts of heat. That got him thinking that perhaps he could do the world some good. “I thought that this could be a solution to energy, to making an unlimited supply,” he says. “But I almost started a fire.”
Heman Bekele Is TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year: TIME's Kid of the Year List
Heman Bekele Is TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year: See who else made the listtime.com