Hundreds of Chinese students gathered at the China Science and Technology Museum over the weekend to exhibit their latest inventions, bringing promising prospects of China's scientific development to visitors.

A device that can serve soccer balls with the curves of veteran strikers caught many visitor's attention at the finals of the 24th Beijing Youth Science Creation Competition that closed yesterday.

Lin Yining, one of the three investors of the device who are all senior students at Beijing Jingshan Middle School, said the device can control the speed and direction of a ball as it served.

What is more important, the device can simulate a looping drive and it can be used to train goalkeepers.

Like Lin, more than 160 primary and middle school students in Beijing gathered at the museum and participated in the finals of the annual competition.

They were selected from over 355,000 youngsters that took the preliminary contests this year.

The soccer ball service device, as well as another 55 creations ranging from ordinary life to space exploration, gained the first prize of the competition.

While the other 100-plus projects shown at the finals won the second prize.

Besides various humming devices, the paper-based achievements of social investigation also caught the eyes of visitors.

Liu Xishuo, a senior student at a middle school affiliated with Beijing Normal University, brought his essay on the study of the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-45) to yesterday's finals in the museum.

He tried to uncover the attitudes of people from different countries on this war and on several latest events such as Japan textbook revision and Japanese leaders paying homage to Yasukuni Shrine.

The 17-year-old boy conducted a survey questioning 100 people from China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United States, Canada and several European countries.

He said he felt very angry that about one-fifth of the Japanese respondents regarded this war as being triggered by natural rules, or even Japan helping China. This is absolutely ridiculous.

(China Daily March 29, 2004)