Michael Koehler can thank his inquisitive scientific mind for a recent visit to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington, D.C., and for an upcoming trip to the Kennedy Space Center for a behind-the-scenes look at a space shuttle launch.

He also can thank his grandmother for having a lot of TV channels.

It was during a visit to his grandmother's house earlier this year that the 15-year-old science buff from Hampton was tuned into the Science Channel.

"I don't have that channel at my house, but I watch it there," said Michael, a ninth-grader at Hampton High School. "I saw an advertisement talking about this challenge."

The challenge was the Discovery Education/3M Young Scientist Challenge. Discovery Communications started the contest in 1999 for students in grades five through eight to nurture the next generation of American scientists.

After seeing the commercial, Michael, then in eighth grade, set out to learn more online, and soon he was buying a video camera and making the required one- to two-minute video about a scientific principle.

Using round beads as atoms and an electric fan as wind, Michael took 84 seconds to explain Bernoulli's Principle, which illustrates why wings are able to lift airplanes off the ground.

"I was familiar with the principle because I fly remote-control airplanes," he said.

Soon, he heard back from Discovery that he had snagged the lone semi-finalist spot from Pennsylvania. Then, news came that he had made the top 10 and would be headed to Washington, D.C., in October to compete for a $50,000 savings bond and the title of America's Top Young Scientist of 2008.

"It turns out that that commercial was the best commercial I ever saw," he said.

Among the 11 challenges during the weeklong competition was one in which the students had to devise a way to make a patch repair on a mock Hubble Space Telescope and then talk an astronaut through making the repair as it would be done in space. In another, they had to discern facts about a topographical map hidden behind a curtain by using lidar, which is similar to radar but uses light waves instead of radio waves. During the competition, the finalists worked with top NASA and 3M scientists.

Michael found that instead of cutthroat challengers, he found great new friends at the contest.

"It was very exciting and we were all best friends on the first day," he said. "As soon as we met, it was like we had known each other forever."

Michael didn't win the top spot, but he did win the award for "exhibiting outstanding team building and leadership skills." And in addition to a $1,000 prize, he won a Space to Sea Adventure trip. The trip, which has yet to be scheduled, will allow him to go behind the scenes at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and view a live space shuttle launch. He then will take to the sea to assist U.S. National Park Service biologists with sea turtle monitoring and oyster reef restoration at Canaveral National Seashore.

"I can't wait," he said. "I think it's going to be amazing."

Michael, whose mom, Julie, is a paraprofessional at Poff Elementary School in Hampton, said he has always loved science, particularly physics.

His love of flying remote-controlled aircraft, combined with his scientific mind, enabled him to design from scratch his own biplane, with a four-foot wingspan.

Adorned with a fresh coat of red paint, the plane made its maiden voyage earlier this year at Hartwood Acres while a crowd of fellow members of the Allegheny Park Flyers Club watched and cheered. As far as anyone could remember, it was the first time a club member had designed and built a plane without so much as a blueprint or kit, Michael said.

His other passion is trains, including the miniature variety. He has volunteered at the Western Pennsylvania Model Railroad Museum in Richland since last year when he turned 14, the age requirement for membership.

"The first thing I did when I turned 14 was join," he said.

This weekend, the museum will kick off its annual holiday train show so Michael is planning to spend much of his time there in the coming weeks, setting up scenery and making repairs after derailments.

And, he'll love every minute of it.

"For me, it's trains in the winter and planes in the summer," he said.