Inspiration
Scientific literacy is incredibly relevant in today's society -- look to the COVID-19 pandemic for painful evidence. Not only that, but learning about science is incredibly eye-opening, awe-inspiring, and frankly, cool.
Sadly, most of my classmates seem to disagree. As an avid pursuer of neuroscience, computer science, and social science, I feel disheartened by my classmates' frequent gripes about bio or chem. Not that I can't relate -- school classes often present science in a formulaic, test-centric light. And for those interested in pursuing scientific research outside of school, even just choosing a topic can be overwhelming in my experience.
Thus, I built Scispire to inspire everyone, particularly students, to discover the science topics that truly speak to them. Scispire strives to plant and germinate the seeds of life-long scientific literacy and enjoyment.
What it does
Scispire draws from over 2000 GPT-generated research project ideas (most of which sound surprisingly intriguing). It displays 5 at a time with the hope that one will eventually spark your curiosity.
How I built it
First, I used GPT playground to generate thousands of research ideas for everything ranging from animal sciences to robotics to pure math to biomedical engineering. Second, I wrote HTML and JS scripts for the website (based on an open Bootstrap/CSS template). Third, I pushed the repo to Github and used its static-site hosting, Github Pages.
Challenges I ran into
Since I've never worked with JS previously, setting up scripts to generate and display the ideas required lots of Googling. Similarly, I haven't written HTML/CSS code before, so I initially didn't understand how column layout was controlled.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
While simplistic, I'm pleased with the cleanness of the one-page website layout. I'm also glad I was able to utilize GPT -- I've really enjoyed experimenting with chatGPT over the past couple of months.
What I learned
First and foremost, I acquired my first taste of web dev. More specifically, I learned the basics of HTML, Javascript, and a bit of CSS.
What's next for Scispire
I'm going to set up tags so users interested specifically in bioengineering or astrophysics can receive custom-tailored project ideas.
Note: Scispire is an (inelegant) portmanteau between "science" and "inspire." A brief Google search did not reveal any existing GPT-generated science topic generators.
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