Kionna Elliot, 18, and Payton Karr, 16, of Northeast High School in Broward unveiled their science-fair project in the East Garden of the White House on Wednesday afternoon.
And the result was not only a display of pride from students repping our hometown but it also gave us a fantastic image of President Obama riding a stationary bike in a suit and tie.
The bicycle-powered contraption was put together by about 30 students from Northeast.
Obama told the students he was impressed by the invention before hopping on and pedaling away.
The bike is built to filter E. coli and other contaminants to deliver clean water to Third World countries. The project itself was inspired by student Kalie Hoke, who saw how unsanitary the water was in Haiti when she visited the island nation. She brought her concerns to her teacher, and the project idea was born.
Teamwork, smarts, and a grant helped make the project a reality.
The bike itself is collapsible and can be easily transported. It can produce enough water to hydrate 20 to 30 people for a 15-hour period.
The students showed off their invention at MIT last year and were told they would be able to show it to the president himself at the White House science fair.
Here's the project's official description:
The Northeast High science project is a collapsible, transportable emergency water-sanitation system that filters E-coli and other harmful pathogens from contaminated water. A bicycle connected to a motor is used to charge a battery, which then powers a pump that mixes untreated water with an ozone substance to sanitize it. In emergencies, the device can be assembled and disassembled in under an hour and can produce enough water to hydrates 20 to 30 people during a 15-hour period.
"It was crazy and really cool to see the president of the United States sitting on something you spent an entire year working on with a group of students," Elliot told the Sun Sentinel.
"He said it was really cool the way science could help us solve real world problems," Karr added.
A president that digs science? OUTRAGEOUS.
Congrats to the students at Northeast High on a pretty fantastic invention.
You can watch the project presentation below.
Or you can see the president riding it in Gif form here.
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