Future City Competition

Well. I haven't exactly been posting recently. Sorry about that. The reason is that I have been preparing for Future City regionals for the past week, and haven't had time to do anything else. I would wake up, work for about 7-9 hours, go do whatever "extracurricular" stuff I had, then come home and work another 1-3.
So anyway, here's a little background on the competition. Each team consists of 3 7th or 8th graders, one teacher, and one engineer mentor. The challenge is to design a city that is at least 150 years in the future, and it has a different theme each year. This year it was "Affordable green housing for those who have lost their homes due to natural disaster or financial emergency." The teams have to design a city on SimCity 4 (100 points), write a research essay on the years theme (70 points), write a narrative describing the city as a whole (20 points), make a scale model of part of the city (120 points), and give an oral presentation (90 points). What is really annoying, is that the simulation has almost nothing to do with the rest of the challenge, yet it is still worth a quarter of the points.
My team was me, Wren (I worked with her on straw bridge last year), and another homeschooler named Harrison. My mom was the teacher, and our engineer mentor was Steve. We named our city Perfectus Amicus Oppidum, which means Perfect Friendly City. I don't remember when we started, but I think it must have been in October. Some of the first things we did were play around with SimCity to get the hang of it, and brainstorm ideas for the city, mostly for the green housing. We settled on a high rise with the floors getting smaller as you go up. We also started researching futuristic technologies.
We figured out pretty quickly that Harrison was way better with SimCity than either me or Wren, so he started to take the lead on that. Wren took the lead on designing the layout of the neighborhood for the model, and writing the narrative. I wrote the essay and did most of the final research and made final decisions about the high rise. As we got closer to the week that the simulation, narrative, and essay were due, I think we all started to wonder if it would get done in time. Steve gave us tips on how to make more money in SimCity, but Harrison felt that many of them would destroy key features of the city. Wren had a good layout on graph paper, but was having trouble getting words on paper (or the computer, for that matter), and was hovering just below 300 words (the narrative needed to be 300-500 words). I was also having a bit of writers block on the essay (700-1000 words), and even once I started writing, I was having trouble writing what needed to be in it. It didn't help me that all three were due the same week as my high school application, and I was more than a little stressed! In the end, we submitted a less-then-perfect simulation. I pretty much took over writing the narrative about 48 hours before it was due, and Wren and I had some fun creating the city's history and school system. I think the narrative we submitted was the absolute best we could do, and probably one of the most memorable for the judges (I mean, where else are you going to find an annual cabbage festival? You can download the PDF's of the narrative and essay at the bottom of this post). The essay could have been much better if I had another week to figure out what they wanted to see, instead of just writing what I though of.
Pretty much right after that, we had to stop for Christmas. I had though that we would only have about 1 or 2 weeks off, but it turned out we didn't meet for almost a month. When we finally did, we started working on the model. Steve told us to use a 50 scale (50 feet equals 1 inch), so we figured out how much we could put on the model, which couldn't be bigger than 25" by 50". We used Wren's layout as a base for starting. Harrison had to go to Florida, so Wren and I made most of the final decisions for the model. We needed at least one moving part, two for full points. We designed three for safety. We had a windmill, a geothermal gizer, and growing cabbages. The geothermal was next to the extinct volcano at the edge of the model. The windmill was originally going to be on top of the mountain, powered by a handheld fan under the mountain, but with 3 days to go we decided to just put the fan on the model as the windmill. It went on the opposite corner, and as an explanation for why the base was so big, we said that the power being generated was stored in a liquid battery in the windmill. Not all of the windmills had them, but we didn't have room to put the rest of the windmill farm on the model.
We were not allowed to spend more than $100 on the model and oral report combined. Thankfully, they didn't count the cost of materials that never made it onto the model :) Because of this, most of the buildings on the model were made from cardboard that would have otherwise been thrown in the recycling bin. The buildings were rather messy until we figured out some techniques, and even once we did they weren't perfect. We ended up making some of the smaller buildings out of foam core, even though it cost way more than cardboard. We though it would be easier to work with, but since we were using 1/2" foam core we were definitely wrong! We did figure it out eventually, but only after getting advice from about 3 different people :) Most of the paint used in the model was house paint that we bought about six years ago, and it was pretty obvious! The paint was so lumpy that we gave it a $0 value in our price sheet. We also used acrylic craft paint that was just as old a lumpy. We bought gesso (kind of like primer, but more waterproof) to use as a base on the cardboard buildings. We also ended up using it to mix lighter colors of paint. We couldn't find any black paint, the only black we found turned everything purple! We used black ink to mix the darker colors, but because of this the model turned out slightly more pastel themed than originally intended.
Wren and I were told to write Harrison's part of the oral report and send it to him to memorize, so we did. We also chose the topic for him :) He talked about the layout of the city, Wren talked about the history and school system (Read the narrative. You won't be sorry), and I talked about the details of the high rise. Thursday, two days before the competition, was the first time we saw Harrison since the week before. We worked some on the model, and also tried the oral report, which we had to have completely memorized. Harrison had the whole thing memorized, but it was shaky. Wren had barely started memorizing, but it was pretty good for where she was at. I hadn't started at all. It was better than what I thought it would be, but that doesn't mean much :) We were going overtime, so my mom cut down the words for us.
On Friday, Wren had to leave early, and Harrison had to come late. We ended up having only about 10 minutes together. We practiced the oral report with a flip chart for the first time. It wasn't great, but we got through it. After Harrison left, I kept working on the model, finishing things that hadn't been done when Wren and Harrison were there. I don't remember what time I went to bed, but it was probably about 2 hours before I got to sleep. I also woke up early, and was to nervous to get back to sleep. When we got to the competition at about 8:15, Harrison was already there, and Wren was just arriving. We got our awesome t-shirts, which were designed to look like tourist t-shirts from the cabbage festival. Only 10 teams were competing, even though more than 25 registered. They announced that the Maryland region was still sending a team to nationals, since we had enough teams register. We started the day as the first team to go through best engineering judging, although we thought at the time that it was model judging (model judging is more important, since it gets counted toward your final score. Engineering, transportation, and disaster readiness were special awards that were judged separately). It went well, and the judges seemed reasonably impressed. As the day went on, we had many sets of judges come by our table, and we did pretty well. We found out that Harrison is extremely good at making things up on the spot, and that helped us a lot. He was able to make up a whole water system, and it even sounded feasible! We ended up using that one at least 3 times through the day. When the disaster readiness judges came, he made up about 5 technologies on the spot. I don't remember most of it, and I doubt he does either, but it sounded pretty good at the time! The oral report could have been better, but I think we did pretty well. We all actually remembered what we were supposed to say, and I think the props worked. I was most nervous for the questions, but it turned out they were all pretty easy. The judges were just reading the questions from a book, which annoyed me. Boring questions get boring answers. When we finished the oral report, we had transportation judging. Again, Harrison came to the rescue and made up a whole system. Afterwards, we though we were done with all of the judging, and relaxed. About 45 minutes later, more judges appeared at our table. They were judging the model, which meant that their score would be counted in out final score. We weren't prepared for more judges, and didn't do our best job. After they left, I started to get increasingly more nervous until the awards ceremony. There were 9 special awards, as well as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, so we were fairly certain we would win something. We ended up winning disaster readiness, which surprised all of us. Harrison kept that award, of course :) We also won 2nd place overall. If we had been 1st, we would have gone to nationals, and I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or relived that we didn't! Because we won disaster readiness, we are invited to the Engineers Club for dinner. It's a gorgeous building, I've been there once before. We're going in February, for education night. The Superintendent of the Maryland Public schools will be speaking, as well as other education-type people. I find this hilarious, since our entire team is homeschooled :) It should be a lot of fun!


Here are some pictures of the model. The oddly shaped building near the center is one of the high rises where those who would otherwise be homeless are housed.

Ok, I can't seem to figure out how to make link to download PDF's right now. I'll try to get that sorted out in the next day or two. In the meantime, look forward to a review of the men's and pair's events at the US figure skating nationals, which double as Olympic trials this year. It should be up by the middle of tomorrow at the latest. I will also be post a picture of the t-shirts that we wore to the competition later today.