Michael likes playing tennis and doing practice science worksheets at home.
Because he likes to help people and make sure they are healthy, Michael hopes to become a physician someday.
Michael says that his science hero is Albert Einstein because "he is the smartest person who ever lived."
While waiting to get his eyes checked, Michael overheard the ophthalmologist giving a vision test to a Russian-speaking patient and wondered if the difficulty the man had in reading the eye chart had anything to do with his unfamiliarity with the English language. He hypothesized that the accuracy of the vision testing results depended on previous familiarity with the testing objects being used.
With the assistance of his ophthalmologist, Michael tested 31 patients using four different Snellen acuity eye charts—one written in English, one written in Hebrew, one written in Greek, and one that consisted of pictures. Only four people knew all three languages; about one third knew Hebrew and English. Michael determined that familiarity does play a role in vision testing and that the most accurate way to test eyesight is by using pictures instead of letters.
