A six-student team at Lafayette’s Peak to Peak Charter School took inspiration from water quality research following the Marshall Fire as they looked for a community problem to address through a STEM project.

Junior Alex Zou, the team leader, said research shows toxic benzene is a common water contaminant following fires, including the local Marshall Fire that burned more than 1,000 homes in December 2021. But water quality testing is expensive and requires sending samples to a lab, slowing the results.

So the team designed a water testing device that’s inexpensive and efficient for the 13th annual Samsung Solve for Tomorrow STEM competition, giving individuals and neighborhoods a better option to ensure water safety after a fire.

“Our solution gives results in minutes,” Alex said. “It’s a much cheaper, faster and easier option.”

The Peak to Peak team was selected this week as the Colorado winner and will go on to compete against 49 other state winners at the national level.

The winning schools were chosen from a pool of 300 state finalists, who submitted detailed plans outlining how they would use STEM concepts to address an important community issue. Lafayette’s Centaurus High School also made it to the state finals.

The state winners moving on to nationals will receive a video production kit from Samsung to document their project in a three-minute video.

They also work with a mentor from Samsung to help them build a prototype.

In May, judges will name three schools as national winners, giving each $100,000 in prize packages that include Samsung Technology and classroom supplies.

Peak to Peak teacher Kristie Letter attended a summer session for educators through Samsung in New York, which she said included guidance for the contest and information about the importance the company places on hiring innovators and problem solvers.

She added she has been impressed by the students’ commitment and high level of work on the project.

“They do extraordinary things,” she said. “I am amazed by them. They’re pretty awesome.”

Three of the team members were part of a team that entered the same contest last year. Though they didn’t win at the state level last year, they said, they learned valuable lessons from their first attempt, including the importance of assigning roles to team members. They also started on the contest late last year and struggled to settle on a topic.

“I’m really proud that we got this far,” said sophomore Tanishka Tagare. “We really expanded on our work.”

Alex said the biggest challenge for this year’s contest was designing the water quality testing device without existing devices to use as models. They used different machines and parts loaned by teachers to test their ideas to make sure they would work.

“It just started with an idea,” he said. “We didn’t know if it would be plausible and could actually work.”

The upperclassmen on the team said their chemistry and physics classes proved especially helpful. They got help with adding to that knowledge base from Peak to Peak science teachers, as well as a retired Peak to Peak teacher who talked to them about using a spectrometer for measurements.

“It’s lots of new information I’ve never learned before,” freshman Penelope Letter said.

While the project required a lot of work outside school, junior Shreya Senthilkumar said, the potential to improve equity through a more affordable water quality test was motivating.

“The testing is not easily accessible now,” she said. “It really would help lots of people.”