Mescalero student wins prestigious science prize

Generating project judged best in state

MESCALERO — Mescalero Apache High School students have won a prestigious statewide science prize and a chance to compete for national honors and a trip to New York to collect bigger winnings with a project designed to prove that electricity can be literally “dirt cheap.”

It’s the second time in three years that the school has taken statewide honors in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest.

Mescalero Apache science teacher Nate Raynor said he wasn’t sure how many schools entered the competition this year, but in 2013 his students beat about a dozen others, including “schools like Mayfield in Las Cruces and schools in Albuquerque.”

This year’s statewide winning project will study how chemicals secreted by microscopic bacteria digesting nutrients in certain kinds of soil might be harnessed to produce useful amounts of electricity.

“One thing we have is plenty of dirt,” Raynor said.

Sophomore Matias LaPaz has been working on the project since last year. His starting point is a small plastic kit that any science student can buy off the shelf and use to demonstrate the electrifying concept of dirt-generated power.

The challenge LaPaz has set for himself is to devise a way to scale up the process so that instead of the tiny charge produced by the kit he can get enough current to light a building.

He’s assembled a small prototype consisting of two acrylic boxes for the dirt, connected by a tube that will contain a salt solution. If the design produces electricity more efficiently than the small kit, he’ll tackle the problem of creating larger versions.

The prize the school has already won for being the state winner is $20,000 worth of video equipment, including a camera and editing laptop that Mescalero Apache High School must use to record LaPaz’s progress. The resulting minidocumentary will be submitted along with 49 other state entries in a bid for one of 15 finalist spots.

The finalists will present their work personally in New York to a panel of judges. Five winners will get another trip to Washington, D.C., for a ceremony in which they’ll receive more awards and meet New Mexico’s congressional delegation.

LaPaz is getting technical assistance from senior Albert Valdez, who plans to study electrical and mechanical engineering next year at the University of Wisconsin and is already enough of a whiz that Raynor has gotten him college gigs instructing veteran teachers how to teach science.

LaPaz may go to New Mexico State himself, but he’s also considering the University of Oregon and Ohio State University.

Raynor, who got into teaching after retiring from a 20-year Air Force career, isn’t sure how he became a science teacher with a special gift for spotting and mentoring ambitious prodigies.

“Going to school, I never did like science myself,” he admitted.

He’s optimistic about LaPaz’s chances. His 2013 Samsung state winners, Loryn Yuzos and Emily Martinez, made the top 20, but not quite the top 15, with another eco-friendly energy project in which they studied better ways to make combustible fuel out of recycled vegetable oil.

Raynor is pushing LaPaz to take the school to the next level.

“We want that trip to New York,” he said.