Middle schoolers tackle today’s problems with tomorrow’s technologies

MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Future engineers gathered at the University of Illinois at Chicago Saturday to compare plans and admire one another's visions for the cities of tomorrow.

Their three-dimensional models offered innovative solutions to the challenges of rapidly depleting resources. In these realistic habitats, the designers said, people could live comfortably in hostile environments such as radioactive wastelands, harsh deserts, Arctic climes and even other planets.

These scenarios don't seem distant or unlikely to these engineers- they could face them in their own lifetimes. Why? Because they're in middle school.

Seventeen teams from Chicago-area middle schools competed in the Chicago Regional Future City Competition, a yearly event at which seventh- and eighth-graders present their work to a panel of judges. Each team has three presenters, and is guided by both a teacher and an engineering mentor.

Eighth-graders Karen Suarez, Jenny Birman, Cole Manschot, Mariel Tader, Kale Hanavan and Susan Bywaters from Franklin Middle School in Wheaton won the competition. They will compete against 39 other teams at the national competition in Washington, D.C., Feb. 17-23.

Because the Franklin team located its winning entry, Qubitersum, in central Australia, the students had to think strategically. "They built their city in the desert," said Dave Manschot, a packaging engineer who mentored the group. "So we talked about, OK, what happens when you build something on sand at the beach?"

To capitalize on Qubitersum's natural resources, the Franklin team's plan called for converting sand into glass to use as building material. The problem of scarce water was met with a sophisticated filtration system for sewage and water pumped in from the Indian Ocean.

Each team spent months researching its project, no easy task to fit in between algebra homework and soccer practice.

Teams used the computer game SimCity to create virtual models of their futuristic cities, down to the nuts and bolts of infrastructure. The game allows users to design a city that meets the needs of its citizens. Each group constructed a three-dimensional scale model of the city using recycled materials, including hair dryers, plastic bottles and soda cans.

SimCity's dynamic interplay between a city's creators and its virtual citizens helped students get a real sense of what makes a city livable. "I learned so much on what you have to do and what makes people happy in their city," said Manschot's son, Cole, a member of Franklin's winning team.

Better living through nanotechnology

This year, students were required to use nanotechnology in their infrastructure, pushing them to learn the nuances of this emerging field, in which materials are manipulated at the molecular level.

"Each year the national organizers pick a topical technology issue," said competition spokesman and structural engineer Bob Johnson. "Nanotechnology is the buzzword right now."

The projects featured a range of nanotechnology applications, from nanosensors programmed to detect structural weaknesses in bridges to nanobots, or microscopically sized machines, some capable of regenerating muscle and bone.

Franklin's Susan Bywaters said she found medical nanotechnology fascinating, particularly a biosensor mechanism known as quantum dots. "They are injected into the arm and they stick to cancerous organs and light up so you can see them in X-rays," she said.

The Science Academy of Chicago's team equipped their Newland project with nanosensors and nanofilters to recognize and remove contaminants in the city's water supply.

"If lead is found, the chemicals released by the RMS [remote monitoring station] will combine with the lead into a larger compound and it won't be able to get through the nanofilters," explained eighth-grader Jeet Patel.

Students found innovative ways to illustrate the nanotechnology applications concretely in their models. The cars and roads of Neoterra, one of Washburne School's two entries, were outfitted with magnets that demonstrated their nano-based safety system.

"Car and road nanosensors would be in constant communication with each other, moving the vehicle in traffic and along the quickest route to its destination," said seventh-grader Kacie Swierk. "The sensors also keep the car centered in its lane and at the safest distance from the vehicles around it."

The magnets achieved both effects, attracting the cars to the road and repelling them from each other.

Preparing the engineers of the future

Chicago is the only city to have hosted a regional competition every year since the Future City Competition began 16 years ago, Johnson said.

The competition tends to attract private and parochial schools in the suburbs, he said, particularly in places such as Wheaton and Naperville, where many parents work in the technology sector. But this year saw more entries from urban schools.

"We're trying to target the magnet schools and then hopefully get more into the community grade schools in the city," Johnson said.

Though the time commitment involved in Future City can be daunting, he said, the payoff is well worth it.

Laura McGovern, a vice president at Chicago engineering firm Alfred Benesch Co., who has been a final round judge for the past three years, agreed.

"Some of the skills you learn in the program don't just apply to engineering, they apply to life," she said, such as teamwork and public speaking.

And, she said, adults have something to learn as well.

"Sometimes you get stuck thinking about how things are instead of how they can be," McGovern said. The students "help us expand our minds and think differently. We look at things like mag cars or hover cars and think, 'that can't happen.' But who knows?"