Scientists breathe life into little girls dragon dream - VIDEO

Australia’s science agency, the CSIRO, has made a number of notable breakthroughs in its history, including Wi-Fi technology, polymer banknotes and insect repellant. But it may have topped all of those with its latest creation – a dragon.CSIRO scientists were set the daunting challenge of bringing the mythical fire-breathing beast alive by Sophie Lester, a seven-year-old girl from Queensland.Sophie wrote to CSIRO – with the salutation “hello lovely scientist” – to request the dragon be made for her. She attached a drawing of herself enjoying the great outdoors with the dragon, which she stipulated must have a black face.“I would like it if you could but if you can’t that’s fine,” she stressed.“I would call it toothless if it was a girl and if it is a boy I would name it Stuart.“I would keep it in my special green grass area where there are lots of space. I would feed it raw fish and I would put a collar on it. If it got hurt I would bandage it if it hurt himself. I would play with it every weekend when there is no school.”Initially, the challenge appeared beyond CSIRO’s scientists, with a blogpost apologising to Australians that throughout its 87-year history it has not been able to “create a dragon or dragon eggs”.But, in a follow-up post, CSIRO said: “We couldn’t sit here and do nothing. After all, we promised Sophie we would look into it.”The result is Toothless, a 3D printed dragon made of titanium. While slightly smaller than a standard dragon, CSIRO assured Sophie that Toothless would be aerodynamic.“Being that electron beams were used to 3D print her, we are certainly glad she didn’t come out breathing them … instead of fire,” said Chad Henry, CSIRO’s additive manufacturing operations manager. “Titanium is super-strong and lightweight, so Toothless will be a very capable flyer.”Sophie’s mother Melissah told the Canberra Times that the young girl now wanted to be a scientist because “they can do anything”.CSIRO responded on its blog by stating: “We’d love to have you in our team, Sophie. For now, stay curious.”(theguardian.com)ANN.Az