Mary Bradburn's class at Batavia Middle School is getting pretty good at building future cities. For the third time since her class first entered the Future City Competition, it won Ohio and moved on to nationals. This year the class focused on making sure people have clean drinking water when faced with a hurricane.
Their solution for treating drinking water involves underground chambers where a purification system using sound waves kicks in. It's based on technology Ohio State University researchers are studying.
Their city, Aquawen, is in Louisiana 150 years in the future. Eighth grader Jack Garrison explains how you could keep houses grounded in the case of a hurricane. "Our houses can actually lock to the ground with electromagnetic energy," he says. "They can kind of bend. So it's kind of like a breakwall that doesn't break."
Garrison and fellow eighth grader Daniel Dacey also made use of dome-shaped homes that absorb hurricane debris without damaging anything.
"This took a couple of months of research actually," Dacey says. "And then finding what ideas would integrate into the city and make the city a better place was pretty tough and challenging."
The students won a special national award from American Public Works Association for "Advancing Quality of Life for All."
Batavia Superintendent Keith Millard is thrilled. "It's an accomplishment that they should be proud of. I'm really excited to see what impact they make in the future with all the research they've done into sustainable living and future technologies."
