At first, it may seem impressive that a 17-year-old is making a multi-touch table running Mac OS X, similar to Microsoft's Surface, for a science fair. It all becomes a little more clear when you consider that the youngster, Bridger Maxwell, is from Utah. I maintain that if more bright 17-year-olds lived in Utah, we would already have flying cars and personal jet-packs. After all, with nothing to do in Utah, they are forced to spend their time on things like science fairs.

Joking aside, the young whipper-snapper is currently on the second generation of his project. The table uses infrared light emitting diodes, where an IR camera transmits input via fingertip motions to the computer running Mac OS X. The information is then passed to an OS X-specific, multi-touch framework that was developed during last year's Google Summer of Code called Open Touch. Maxwell then wrote a framework that decodes the information that Open Touch interprets into Objective C objects. He then uses the decoded information to control the user input into an application that Maxwell wrote to display comics with Core Animation effects.

The end result is the ability to manipulate the program with the user's fingertips. While the project is still in its infancy, as are the the libraries Maxwell relies on, the project is a great proof of concept for future modifiers. The project is pretty impressive for a 17-year-old, too. Even one living in Utah.