The name of the contest is sort of daunting: Innovate or Die. But if that bothers Julia Coffin and Alice Arsenault, 17-year-old Concord High seniors who've been friends since third grade, they don't show it.

Ask them if they spent dozens of weekends in the garage, hammers in hand, sweating over how to build their 6-foot-tall pedal-powered water filtration system and they'll look at each other and shrug.

"It was more of a, 'Come home from school and take a nap and then work on it' thing," Arsenault said.

The aim of the contest, sponsored by Specialized bicycles and Google, was to invent a machine that used the energy generated by pedaling a bike to power something, well, innovative. Teams of up to five people could create a machine, film it and submit it via YouTube by Dec. 15. The winners will be chosen Jan. 15, and the team that snags the grand prize will win $5,000 and a Specialized bike for each member.

The 102 entries posted on YouTube are varied. There are a handful of pedal-powered blenders, a peanut shucker, an ice cream maker and even a salad spinner, built in an old washing machine. About a half-dozen teams also built water filtration systems, which Coffin and Arsenault think is pretty cool.

Coffin said the idea resonated with her because her father and stepmother recently adopted a baby girl from Guatemala. That got her and Arsenault thinking about the conditions in third-world countries, and they came upon an upsetting statistic: 5,000 children die each day from waterborne illnesses.

"It hit home," Coffin said, "because coming from Concord, we're kind of removed from that."

Coffin's stepfather, Mark Kritlow, found out about the Innovate or Die contest a month and a half ago. He'd coached both Coffin and Arsenault on robotics and Destination Imagination teams since they were in grade school, and he told the girls about the pedal-powered challenge. The teens quickly settled on water filtration as a goal, but as Arsenault said, "figuring out the details was harder."

Roughly, their invention works like this: The bike is made stationary, and the back wheel is attached to a simple pump that looks like a tiny steamboat paddlewheel. The pump is attached to a hose, which sucks up contaminated water when the bike is pedaled. The hose leads to two pieces of PVC pipe.

The pipes, upright in a wooden stand, are where the water is filtered. Inside are pieces of smashed bricks or pottery coated with colloidal silver. The brick particles filter out dirt and sand; the colloidal silver kills bacteria. Colloidal silver is somewhat controversial: It isn't considered safe by the Food and Drug Administration due to possible side effects, but it is an inexpensive way to clean water.

The result is water that's safe enough to drink, made possible by a machine that's easy to build. It took Coffin and Arsenault less than four hours to assemble, and the parts, sans bike, cost about $25.

"The whole point of the project is to make something that could be reproduced in developing countries," Coffin said. She and Arsenault hope to win enough money from either contests or civic organizations to build some working prototypes and set them up in third-world countries this summer.

"I'm still trying to figure out what to do in college," Arsenault said, "and for this to come along made me think that this might be what I want to do. . . . A few months before, I was wrapped up in Concord."

That's not to say that before inventing their pedal-powered machine Arsenault and Coffin were sitting around with nothing to do. Both girls have the sorts of resumes that make college admissions officials take notice. Coffin is secretary of the senior class. Arsenault is the band's drum major. Both play on Concord High's first official girls' hockey team and have shelves full of robotics trophies.

Arsenault is considering going to Worcester Polytechnic Institute for environmental engineering. Coffin wants to go to college, join the Peace Corps and become a history teacher. Between schoolwork, activities and college applications, both girls found time for the contest because solving problems and giving back are two things they love to do. They just don't like talking about it that much.

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