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The idea was simple: create an illuminated cable to distinguish it from other cables, which can get lost in a jumble of wires under most computer desks.

Clarksburg High School junior Alex Ivanov of Clarksburg, first introduced the concept of making one cable stand out from another during a brainstorming session at a meeting of the school's Inventors Club, the Coyote Inventors.

"It was a giant hassle, thinking how you would know [which cord was which]," Ivanov said. "Our world functions on just wires. It's hard to fix things when they all look alike."

His first thought was to color code the cables but "there is a limit to the colors," he said.

That's when he came up with the idea of a cable that would light up when touched, illuminating it from end to end, allowing the user to know where it began and where it ended.

Ivanov's idea struck a chord with the other club members as they were trying to decide which of the many invention ideas they had generated to pursue.

"Most Americans buy things to make life easier," Ivanov said.

Taking the basic concept, the students along with sponsors Sarah Debelius Costlow and Paul Koda applied for a grant from the Lemelson-MIT Inven Team initiative, a program designed to inspire the next generation of inventors. The school was one of only 16 in the country awarded grants, Debelius Costlow said.

"The Clarksburg High School InvenTeam's project was selected because all the judges agreed that this invention would be useful in daily life for alleviating the frustration of working with tangled computer cables," Leigh Estabrooks, the Lemelson-MIT Program's invention education officer, said in an e-mail.

The club is using the almost $9,000 grant to bring its idea to fruition and will present the product, which they call the Torch Cord, at the EurekaFest in Cambridge, Mass., in June.

Koda, a chemistry teacher, said the students have great support at Clarksburg.

"Most high school students have fantastic ideas but no way to channel them, so we hope to do that," he said.

It helps that Koda is a patent attorney and knows the path the students have to travel as they take their idea to finished product.

After winning the grant, the students formed a team of 10 that meets twice weekly to work on the invention.

Each team member has a specific job in addition to working on the actual product.

Junior Micaela Larson of Germantown is the financial officer. She keeps track of all the receipts for supplies purchased.

"And about $800 for nutrients like pizza," Shrey Tarpara, a junior from Boyds, added.

Larson also has to generate a financial report to be sent to MIT three times throughout the nine-month project. The club is spending its money wisely, she said.

"We are halfway through the project and halfway through the money," Larson said.

The team already has a working prototype.

Ian Grissom, a junior from Clarksburg and one of the chief engineers for the project, held up a USB cable wrapped in black electrical tape and covered with a spiral of neon green glow wire.

"This is our most recent prototype. We've had many pre-prototypes but this is the first that is complete," Grissom said. "It was a lot of fun when we got it to work.

Grissom said the current product fulfills the parameters of the project, but they hope to further refine it before the June deadline.

The students are doing much more than solving a problem with their unique computer cable, Koda said.

"The purpose of the whole thing is to learn to apply for and get and work with grants," he said "They are learning things as mundane as how to write a business letter and they are learning the process for becoming entrepreneurs."

The students would not reveal everything that went into the creation of their cable but they were happy to share their hopes for patenting their invention.