Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 20, 1993 TAG: 9312200091
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ANNAPOLIS LENGTH: Medium
In her crisp blue uniform, she is all military, all Navy.
But the 18-year-old Alexandria, Va. native does confess to one weakness. She loves diamonds.
Potts has devised a process to create synthetic diamonds with materials that can be bought at a hardware store. She created an oxygen-acetylene reaction with a blow torch in her parents' garage while in high school.
"Diamonds are a girl's best friend," Potts said with an obviously practiced timing. "Diamonds have a lot of application for engineering."
Before coming to the Naval Academy, Potts spent four years in high school making the synthetic diamond.
"I thought about how diamonds form naturally," she said. "I worked really hard and wouldn't stop until I found it."
It took her 61 tries and hundreds of hours of work before she produced diamond crystals.
In her sophomore year of high school, she spent four months without going out on weekends so she could spend more time in the makeshift lab in the garage. Balancing five hours a day of practice for competitive figure skating and her work in student government, she could only find time to research on weekend nights.
But the work paid off. She was a finalist for Westinghouse's Science Talent Search and got to meet President Clinton for that honor.
And she recently represented the United States at the European Community's Young Scientist Fair in Germany as the winner of the 1993 International Science and Engineering Award.
The diamonds she made are purely industrial and are rather small in size. She has applied for a patent for her helium procedure and is waiting for it to be issued.
by CNB