Decatur students learn about renewable energy in Future City project

Dec. 1—Renewable energy generation is something Decatur students are striving for this year, using hydroelectric and nuclear fusion energy to power model cities they have built for the 2023 districtwide Future City Competition next week.

Twelve teams comprised of over 100 seventh and eighth grade Decatur students have been working for over a month constructing their cities. They will present the projects to a panel of judges at First Baptist Decatur on Monday beginning at 9 a.m.

Three teams from Decatur Middle, Austin Middle and Austin Junior High will advance from this competition to the statewide competition at Auburn University in January.

Decatur Middle eighth grader Corinne Davis and her team built a city she says is powered by hydroelectric, solar and nuclear energy.

"Our city is located in Arizona and we have a hydroelectric dam coming out of the canyons," Davis said. "We made sure to add an underground layer so we can show the sewer system as well because we have to show how we're doing our (sewage) system."

To accomplish their goal of being environmentally friendly, the team created a filtration system to hamper carbon emissions.

"You know how factories always produce a lot of smoke? We have created a filtration system that, instead of causing more pollution, it filters the air and clean air is coming back out," Davis said.

The students are required to build cities 100 years in the future, overcoming issues that cities are currently facing.

"Overcrowding is a big problem in cities right now," Davis said. "So we tried to incorporate this as a vertical city while also looking at safety issues behind doing vertical."

"Crime is also another issue in cities and so we're trying to be crime-free," said fellow eighth grade student Riley Chism. "In every house, there's a button people can press that will immediately notify the police station, sort of like Life Alert."

One of the three teams at Austin Middle constructed a city in Hawaii because of natural resources the city can utilize from an island, said team captain Sarah Provenzano.

"There's natural native plant species that we can cultivate as medicine," Provenzano said. "This medicine is not coming from a lab, just good herbal medicine."

Teammate Layla Hardison said having a city by the shore will also allow them to incorporate wind turbines to generate electricity. Their main source of electricity is nuclear fusion.

"We built this nuclear fusion reactor in our city that we made out of an old intercom our school had," Provenzano said. "The nuclear reactor doesn't release any carbon, it just releases helium, so it doesn't harm anyone at all."

All components of the students' cities are made of recycled materials and the teams had a $100 budget this year.

"We did purchase spray foam to make the canyons, but everything else we used was just from our supply closet," Davis said.

Provenzano, Hardison, and the rest of their teammates are in seventh grade this year and are participating for the first time in Future City, but Gifted Specialist Christy Johns says they have a lot of potential.

"Since they started building early last month, it's just been a beehive of activity in this classroom," Johns said. "Each student has different strengths they give to the team."

Each team at Future City must present a 1,500-word essay, present their model city to judges and answer questions about its specifics, and present a project plan.

"A project plan is where they have to set themselves up a schedule and learn how to work on a deadline," Johns said.

Johns has been a part of Future City for the last five years in both Austin Middle and Austin Junior High and said the competition teaches both teamwork and substantive matters like energy generation.

"They learn, for example, how TVA sells electricity to other cities and about the power plants they have," Johns said.

— wes.tomlinson@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2442.