COLUMBUS — St. Vincent de Paul’s Future City team took second place in the 2011 Ohio Region competition held at the Center for Science and Industry on Jan. 15. The first-place city was created by students from Westerville Heritage Middle School.
St. Vincent’s design team — eighth-graders Sadie Brass, Madi Powers, Will Salvucci and Parker Van Fossen — were advised by Terra Dilley and mentored by Rolls-Royce senior facility engineer Joe Taposci. Their future city, called Tranquility, was built in 2100 on Earth’s moon, near the area where Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon.
During the competition, Sadie acted as governor of Tranquility, Will was the city engineer and Parker was president of the Tranquility Chamber of Commerce. Madi was the alternate for the competition and participated in all phases of the model construction.
Because part of the Future City challenge is using recyclable materials, model Tranquility was built with cardboard cereal and soap boxes, beverage and other plastic containers, Christmas lights, shoestring and a scrap shipping skid. Dilley said the most challenging part of the project was agreeing on what to make and where to put it on the model.
Laser sensors are strategically placed around the city to repel any incoming meteors, and the students constructed a moving radar dish to search for incoming meteors. A maglev rocket launch tube is used for interplanetary travel. Specially tinted anti-ultraviolet glass covers the city’s greenhouse bio domes, which are connected by a series of tubes. A moving elevator connects the subway and the underground area, and also accesses the moon’s surface for cars and people. Other modes of transportation are electric cars, buses and a monorail.
