OLD TOWN, Maine — Late Thursday morning, some students in Jon Doty’s eighth-grade geometry class were constructing a city of the future.
Hovering over a bare, 2-foot-by-3-foot plywood rectangle, Eddie Gonnolla, 13, tentatively positioned a ribbon of black roofing paper for a highway, pausing to refer to a computerized image of the future city lying on the table beside him.
Ben Lovejoy, 14, watched, while 14-year-old Kelsey Maxim scoured a nearby table for usable lengths of wire and electrical tape. On the floor of the portable classroom at the Leonard Middle School were some scraps of rigid foam insulation, sheets of cardboard and other bits of construction material.
“Remember, this all has to be built out of recycled and reused materials, and you have to keep track of what it costs,” Doty reminded the students.
Building the model city was getting off to a late start. Early Saturday morning, Doty and the three young engineers will leave one of Maine’s smallest cities for New England’s largest to compete in the National Engineers Week Future City regional competition at Northeastern University. They will make the four-hour drive to Boston, participate in the event, and head back to Maine that night.
Competing students use the popular Sim City software to design their environmentally sustainable, energy-saving, pedestrian-friendly cities. They write abstracts describing their projects and must present and defend their designs before a team of engineer-judges who test the depth of the students’ knowledge. Some, like the Old Town team, build tabletop models to aid their presentations.
This year, a special challenge was to design a home water system that minimizes use of municipal water supplies.
“We made three different innovations,” Maxim said. “We made a storm water drain on top of the house to collect rainwater. We designed a gray-water filter to reuse household water for flushing toilets. And we’re using a dehumidifier to pull water out of the air.”
The team’s entry also includes a hydrogen plant and a windmill to provide power to their city.
It’s a pretty good design, Doty said, especially considering the competition started in September, but his team didn’t get to work until the end of October. “Next year, that two-month head start will be important,” he said.
The winning team from the regional event will advance to the national finals in Washington, D.C., in February. More than 30,000 students from 1,100 middle schools around the country are expected to participate. The grand prize is a trip to the U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala.
This marks the 17th year of the National Engineers Week competition and the 12th year there has been a regional event in New England, according to professional engineer Lisa Freed, coordinator of the New England competition. This is the first year a team from Maine will compete, she said.
“This year, we’re expecting about 200 students from 17 different schools,” she said. “I’m still waiting to get the final count so I know how many T-shirts to print up,” she said Thursday.
The Old Town youngsters had a late start, she said, but they quickly got up to speed, thanks in part to their access to laptop computers. “Maine’s laptop program has been a lifesaver,” she said. “These kids have had no problem.”
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