In 2013, she made a body-heat flashlight; now Ann Makosinski is making toys to teach kids about clean energy

They say some children are born prodigies, and when it comes to Ann Makosinski, the statement holds true. As a teenager living in Canada, her friend living in the Philippines told her that she couldn't study at night since her family couldn't afford electricity to turn the lights on. Soon she wondered if there was a way to have light without traditional electricity. This is when she came up with a record-making invention, a flashlight powered by body heat.Like other children her age, Makosinski did not watch television or play video games. She spent her time listening to the opera, watching silent movies and learning to play the piano and violin. Interestingly, her first toy was a box of transistors. “I wasn’t given many toys, so I had to make my own,” she said to CNN back in 2019. “I would take garbage and my hot glue gun from around the house and piece together these so-called inventions, and obviously they never worked, but the idea of taking things from around me and piecing them together to make something better just kind of came really naturally.”A new kind of lightMakosinski was only 15 when she invented a flashlight that was powered by the heat of the user's hands. The Holl...