How germs travel on planes and how we can stop them

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Like many people, I fly at least once a year – and every time I do I seem to get a cold or flu. Even if we don’t always get sick, when one person sneezes on a plane, everyone around them at least worries about getting sick too. And we’re not just worrying about colds and flu – we are worrying about a whole range of other airborne diseases such as: SARS, Tuberculosis, Meningococcal, and Ebola.

So why are planes so worrying as regards the spread of airborne diseases? What Raymond Wang discovered is: The way air moves inside a plane can actually help to spread pathogens to other passengers. Using fluid dynamics, he created computational simulations of how airflow spreads germs.

And then this 17-year-old inventor created a prize-winning idea to fix it …