GIRL: One day I was walking in from lunch and I saw my friend Sumaitah and she, like, slipped on the ground because her boots were wet.

My name is Samira.

- I'm Sumaitah.

- My name is Abinaya.

- I'm Nubla.

- And I'm Jothika.

Everyone started laughing at me because, like, I looked ridiculous on the floor.

So we're, like, oh, we need... like there was a problem, right?

- So we came up with a device that we thought would suck up all the water from wet boots so that in incidents like that happened to Sumaitah wouldn't happen ever again.

SAMIRA: We also went on a few websites to see how vacuums work.

Basically, it's a machine that dries your footwear.

You would put your boots or your shoes on top of the rack, and the machine itself would suck the water.

Your shoes would be dry by the end of the day.

- Our design would use recycled materials like a plastic bottle, an old cookie rack, and a piece of cheesecloth to catch the moisture from the shoes.

We cut up a pop can to make blades and attached them to a small DC motor to create a fan that would create suction.

SUMAITAH: This is how it works.

We have two batteries here, 1.5 volts.

And then we use a safety pin as a switch to turn it on so it works... it works like that.

It goes in and then it turns on.

And then we have a fan made out of a pop can.

It works now.

And then on top of it, to prevent water from going through it, you would put the net on top so that it would catch all the water and any, like, dirt or anything that goes in.

SUMAITAH: There you go.

And then, and you can put the lid on top and the funnel as well.

SAMIRA: We took a few cookie racks, right, and we connected them with the zap straps.

SUMAITAH: We put it in our locker and we left it there for, like, 20 to 30 minutes and we came back and our shoes were still wet and it didn't really work.

We made some, like, key changes like changing the first DC motor from a 3-volt to a 9-volt, because we thought it would have more power and it would provide more suction.

So this is our second prototype of our footwear dehydrator.

At the bottom we have our nine-volt DC motor, because the last one we had was three volts, so we thought it would be better if we used a higher-powered one.

We also have it connected to our fan made from scratch of a pop can, and then we connected it to it with a glue gun.

SAMIRA: And since it's a bigger bottle, we need to use a bigger piece of cheesecloth to catch the moisture.

- Now we have the top part of the bottle, right, which sits on top of the cheesecloth.

We decided to use a bigger bottle and for that we would make a bigger fan, and the bigger fan would lead to a bigger funnel to create more area for the water to fall into.

(fan blades clicking) - We put the second prototype in the locker, but then when we opened the locker 30 minutes later, the battery had died because of the more powerful motor.

We decided to reduce the voltage from nine volt to six volt, since nine volt was more powerful and it died quicker.

- So we used four 1.5 volt batteries to create six volts of power.

We made some better fan blades that were angled more to create more suction.

We decided to replace the cheesecloth with a more water-resistant rubber material which would hold the water better.

- Finally we put our third prototype in the locker.

And 45 minutes later, we checked and the shoes were dry.

- Guys, it worked!

(all exclaiming and cheering) - Working in a group was a really good bonding experience for us all.

- Yeah, we really enjoyed it.

Because we all have everything we need to have, like, a great group all together.

- Yeah, so.

- And here we are, we succeeded.

- Yeah.

(cheering and laughing)