By: Srishti Sawant

Last Friday, students at Innovation Academy (IA) constructed a 307.682-meter (1009 feet 5 inches) DNA model, potentially breaking the current Guinness World Record of 190.35 meters (624 feet 6 inches) that was set by Pennsbury High School in 2023 (Guinness World Records, 2023).

Over the past three months, IA’s Biology Olympiad Club and Science National Honor Society (SNHS) teamed up in an ongoing attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the longest model strand of DNA. On October 24, over 50 IA students worked on assembling thousands of popsicle sticks and hand-cut strips of paper into a potentially record-breaking model of DNA for more than 6 hours.

SNHS and Biolympiad President Kaelyn Fu [12] said the idea was born from an aspiration to unite students through science.

“We wanted to do something big and inspiring related to biology,” she explained. “DNA is usually invisible to our eyes, so making it larger just made it easier to comprehend.”

Fu shared that following Guinness’s detailed verification requirements was the toughest part.

“There were so many rules and long documents to go through,” she said. “We had to prepare over 4,000 popsicle sticks and 1,600 strips of paper—it took a long time.”

The school expects to hear back from Guinness within about 12 weeks regarding official recognition. Despite the windy weather causing parts of the model to break during setup, IA remains hopeful.

“Nothing that you want to do is impossible,” she said. “We faced a lot of challenges, but we still made it this far—and maybe the next generation can take it even further.”