Wizard of recycling lures kids to science

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Macias's interest in science began with observing everyday objects. Magnets, with their inexplicable attraction and repulsion, and the light-bending capacity of simple eyeglasses made him want to understand.

"These things always seemed magical to me," he says. Inspiration aside, the boy's inventions didn't always go as planned – at age 9, he decided to make a formula to take out ink spots, but instead he stained the floor. "That was the invention of the indelible spot," he says mischievously. His mother ended up finding out about the spot after reading his notebook, where he recorded each day's work.

Another time, he filled his house with smoke by mistakenly lighting the entire contents of a bomb he made from ingredients bought at the local pharmacy.

He didn't exactly have a cheerleader for his inventions, he says, but his grandfather's work operating radio telegraphs on oceangoing ships sparked his curiosity. Macias would ask him for tools, and the man would hand over what he needed or explain how a process worked.

Later, at Mexico's Del Valle University, Macias studied accounting and philosophy, far removed from the scientific workshop he would found in his 30s. But during that time, he fed his inventiveness by making rockets equipped with parachutes and selling them to an model airplane store.

But these days, Macias guides kids toward safer projects than he undertook as a child.

"Here the kids do absolutely nothing dangerous," he says, noting that they're "dying to do" fireworks, which is not in the workshop repertoire.

Mainly, he tries to invoke the same curiosity in children that he felt as a child. Many examples of his success are enrolled in science tracks at some of the country's top universities.

Tabare Arrua, now 23, has known Macias since he took a summer class at Mama Tierra at age 8. Mr. Arrua's first project was a mini-motor boat, and he later made tiny solar cars and even attempted a remote-control airplane.

"It's a really fun way to learn and grow," he says. At 15, Arrua became a summer assistant at Mama Tierra and worked there when able to during the school year. He's now a student of engineering at Mexico's National Autonomous University, and says of Macias, "He helped me to keep on the path of science."

The relationship continues – recently Arrua went to Macias for help on a university project. Together they made a Van de Graaff generator, which accumulates electrostatic charges in a metallic sphere. "Even now, at the university level, in this workshop where grade-schoolers go, he's helping me," Arrua says.

Dinah Colin, an assistant at Mama Tierra, came a different way. As a first-year computational engineering student at the National Autonomous University, she was helping her little sister with homework – a science project using solar energy. Friends told Ms. Colin to head for Mama Tierra. "It was really crazy because I had never seen a place like that," she says.

She made a boat with a solar-powered, rotating radar tower. And the workshop opened new horizons, including her creation, the "Brother alarm." She has two little brothers, who sparked the idea for the motion-detecting device that, when placed in her bedroom, throws a little ball at entering offenders. "They are things that you imagine as a child but you never thought you could make," she says.

Her sister's boat project went so well that Macias hired Colin to work for him.

A fast-talker by nature, she gets even more animated when asked to describe Macias: "He's like those guys in the cartoons, like a mad scientist. He gets energized about everything he sees, as if he were seeing it for the first time."

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