Walk through some of the larger cities in the U.S. and there likely will be a skyscraper towering above. Walk through the city of Bagong Pag-asa and you'll see the opposite: an “earthscraper.”
“It goes underground 300 meters,” said Kenmoor Middle School eighth-grader Vinaichandra Rachakonda, who with his fellow peers created the structure for a model city that's getting national attention. “There’s housing for all incomes, public things like shops, clinics.”
Vinaichandra, of Glenn Dale, and four other Kenmoor students created a scale model of Bagong Pag-asa, translated from the Philippine Tagalog language for “New Hope,” out of donated and reusable materials for the Future City Competition, an annual national model-cities competition for students. The students wanted to name the city “New Hope” and liked the Tagalog translation the best but were unaware of a real Bagong Pag-asa that is part of Quezon City in the Philippines.
The Landover school earned a spot among 38 schools in the national finals, which will take place Feb. 19-21 in Crystal City, Va. Kenmoor won the regional competition in 2010 but the school has never won in nationals nor has any Prince George’s County public school won in nationals. Regionals include schools from Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia.
The program, sponsored by the National Engineers Week Foundation, which plans annual engineering competitions for K-12 students, encourages students to create scale models of cities to get a taste for what real architects and engineers troubleshoot when they create buildings and infrastructure, such as roads. Lanham’s Robert Goddard Montessori also is a participant in the Future City Competition, but did not make the finals.
Vinaichandra and 10 more Kenmoor students will compete for $5,000 from the National Society of Professional Engineers and a trip to U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala. The Kenmoor team won a Jan. 14 regional competition at the Baltimore Museum of Industry against about 20 other teams, said Kenmoor teacher Kendal Galiber, in her third year of being a sponsor who advises the students.
The theme this year was Fuel Your Future, focusing on what type of energy source the model city would use and how it would be distributed.
This fall the students researched possible energy sources to power the city and made proposals, ultimately deciding on nuclear fusion because of its “high-energy output” and almost no chance of a meltdown, said Hunter Whaples, 12, a seventh-grader from Greenbelt. John Li, 12, a seventh-grader from Laurel, said the team wanted its nuclear fusion plant to be in an isolated area in case something went wrong so it would affect as few residents as possible. Nuclear fusion occurs when nuclei in elements such as hydrogen combine at high speeds and temperature and release energy, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory website.
“Also, it was futuristic because it hasn’t been done before,” Hunter said. “Solar panels had been done, just not perfected.”
Kenmoor will present its city against 37 others in the national finals and would need to place in the judges’ top five teams to present before being considered for first, second or third place, Galiber said.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for them to see all aspects of city planning,” said Galiber, who told her students Jan. 24 to prepare for random questions in the national competition and to be judged on elements such as innovative use of construction materials for the city, not the model itself. “The competition is sponsored by engineers, but there’s so much more to it.”
The base of the city, which featured a central business district and a historic section, is a portion of an old wooden door. A sports stadium made of Lego blocks flanks one edge and in the corner is a city hall made from an upside-down plastic food container.
The team began planning in September and as the competition drew close began meeting three times per week for 90 minutes to finish the model and practice presentation for regionals. There is an annual $25 registration fee, according to the Future City website.
In addition to Galiber, Hunter’s father, David Whaples, a Landover-based architect, and Vinaichandra’s father, Shankar Rachakonda, who Galiber said has a degree in mechanical engineering, assisted the team. Some buildings were made out of scrap wood Whaples donated to the team.
“It’s all collaborative, and that’s really what had to happen here,” David Whaples said. “That’s what has to happen when you're planning cities.”
nmcgill@gazette.net
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