May 21, 2014 — Clean drinking water is a basic necessity, and figuring out more efficient ways to purify water will be more important than ever as we move into a more crowded and less predictable future. At Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Selma Mededovic Thagard is using a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant to scale up a water purification method that avoids chemicals, such as chlorine, common in other treatment methods. Instead, “we are pretty much using water to treat water,” Thagard says, “when we apply very high voltage and we create plasma, we create lightning inside of the water” to purify it. Watch the video below for a full explanation from Thagard.