ROOTSTOWN, Ohio — An eighth grader from a small Ohio town is making her community proud, after winning a national invention competition this year, and now, her anti-car theft device is in the process of being patented for sale on the market.
Ava-Elizabeth Bell has a wide range of interests and talents.
“I’m part of the cross country team, volleyball, basketball, track and I do softball,” she said.
But When the middle schooler isn’t busy with sports, she spends a lot of time perfecting her invention.
“I started this invention process in 4th grade.”
A few years back, Bell’s teacher, in a small town East of Akron, asked their class to create something new.
Inspired by the octopus’s ability to squirt dark ink, Bell came up with the idea to spray an opaque liquid on a car’s windshield to prevent theft.
“However, as I continued to further advance my invention, I realized that that was super messy and it was a one time use,” Bell said.
So, she kept digging, and found a film that can be transparent when a car is running, and opaque when it’s turned off, so thieves aren’t able to look inside your parked car.
“This is the electrochromic film, and I did not create this. But my uses, combined with the other factors of my invention, are unique,” she said. “It uses polymer-dispersed liquid crystals. So, when there's no electricity running through it, it's opaque and you can't see through it. When there is electricity, it's transparent and it allows you to drive safely.”
The invention has taken Bell to events locally, nationally and even around the world.
Most recently, she won her age category in a national “Why Didn’t I Think of That?” Invention competition in Washington D.C.
As part of her award, she’s now working with patent lawyers to get her invention on the market.
“It was really cool to be recognized by so many people and so many great organizations,” Bell said. “It really started to hit me when I won awards at nationals, because there were so many people and so many other good inventions that I saw there.”
After years of practice, Bell has become much more comfortable and confident in pitching her ideas to others, but she recognizes how hard that can be for other kids.
Still — she encourages anyone with a good idea to try.
“Start with the small thing,” Bell said. “Figure out what you want to do, and then just slowly work on all the little things that you could do to make it better. And then all of those little things might not seem like much to you because you're doing them all split up. But when you put it together, it creates something that's really amazing.”
For part of the patent process, Bell is doing market research about car security through a survey. She's working to get as many responses as possible. If you’d like to help her, you can find the survey here.
Correction: The article has been corrected to say Ava-Elizabeth Bell is in the eighth grade. (Jan. 2, 2025)