Alex Paris of Scarsdale turned a pot of spinach into a first-place win in the environmental science division of the New York State Science and Engineering Fair.

The 16-year-old junior at The Masters School, a private school in Dobbs Ferry, used the leafy vegetable for his project, “Chloroplast Based Photovoltaic Cells.” In regular people language, that basically means he extracted chloroplasts from spinach and used them to generate electricity. Chloroplasts, which contain chlorophyll, are light-absorbing organelles found in plant cells and are a key component in photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is how plants produce oxygen and food. (Who am I kidding? I just Googled all of this.)

Alex created a liquid solution after extracting the chloroplasts. He was able to produce 1.7 volts of electricity from the solution as its electrons hopped around during the photosynthesis process. He said that’s enough energy to power a small calculator. He used spinach because it has a high concentration of chloroplasts and is inexpensive.

Alex envisions a world where even grass clippings can be used as an energy source. “It’s a new, innovative way of recycling plants to produce energy,” he said.

UPDATE: I neglected to mention that Alex also won The Air Force award for outstanding science/engineering project and a $40,000 scholarship to Ohio Wesleyan University.