Dallas whiz kid wins national science prize

Details: Robitaille used the concept of topological entropy to study braids and found that a low number of strands mostly led to orderly braids, but the intertwined twists became chaotic with a large number of strands.

The 18-year-old homeschooled senior took the sixth-place prize in the talent search, the nation's oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors.

• Sponsor Regeneron is a publicly traded biotech company.

What they’re saying: Robitaille said strands "can intertwine and make all sort of weird mathematical patterns."

• "You think of braids as related to mixing up fluids."

Go deeper: Watch Robitaille explain his project here.