Future City winners — again
Farnsworth students earn moment in the sun

GUILDERLAND — It’s on to the nation’s capital for La Playa del Sol.

For the second year in row, a team of Farnsworth Middle School students has built a Future City that won the regional competition, part of National Engineers Week, and will now compete in Washington, D.C. for national honors.

The Farnsworth students, competing against 24 local middle-school teams, also came away with trophies for Best Essay, BestSim City Design, Best Performance, and the People’s Choice Award for Favorite City.

With SimCity software, students who create livable cities are rewarded by having them grow as residents move in; they learn the importance of good infrastructure like water and power and transportation.

The students also had to write an essay about an assigned engineering design problem and make a presentation as well as build a city model.

The Farnsworth students learned from last year’s competition. For instance, they noticed the winning cities had a color scheme and so they built their Beach in the Sun — set on the California coast — in shining silver with sea-colored accents of blue and aqua.
"Last year’s was a mish-mash," said eighth-grader Alex Dvorscak of the random colors on the model he helped build. "When we went to nationals, we noticed a lot of them followed a certain pattern."
He built a skyscraper this year. "It’s a mixture of residential and commercial; people can live in the same building where they work," said Dvorscak.

Beneath the pretty surface is solid research.
Seventh-grader Mike Dvorscak got interested in the project through his brother’s work last year. He built the hydroponics center for growing plants indoors. "We found some articles on-line for things being built like it today," he said.
"We merged reality with futuristic ideas," said eighth-grader Dan Sipzner, who was also on last year’s team.
He pointed out the city’s flying electrical generator, describing it as "a large helium-filled blimp about the size of a football field."

It is built of applesauce containers atop wire from a clothes hanger.

Dan’s father, Robert Sipzner of Barton and Loguidice, helped the team of 10 students and four alternates as an engineer mentor.
Tom McGreevy, a Farnsworth technology teacher, and Deborah Escobar, the school’s enrichment teacher, coached the team. Team members like eighth-grader Haejin Hwang had taken Escobar’s course called "Future Engineers and Architects."
Hwang wants to be a medical doctor but enjoys stretching herself in different ways. "I used a lot of my talent and my creativity," she said of working on the Future City project.

She used the dome-shaped clear plastic tops of cups for Slushies to build a hotel that is both above and below ground.

Hwang also helped create a building in the shape of a star.
"They cut 20 stars out of foam board," said Escobar.
"But then the edges weren’t even," said Hwang.
"I brought in Spackle," said Escobar. "It looks wonderful."
Seventh-grader Adison Vanina, who built the city’s lock and canal of balsa wood, enjoyed the project, he said, "Because I like building stuff.

Jesse Feinman, who will represent the team in Washington along with Hwang and Sipzner, built a plant that separates water into its component parts of hydrogen and oxygen. And he built a government complex.
But it’s not all work and no play in the Future City. La Playa del Sol has an indoor ski slope capped with metalized polyester which, Feinman said, "is used in real life for insulation in spacecraft; it’s efficient in heat transfer," he said.

He got the idea for an indoor ski slope from a real one in Dubai in the Middle East.
Escobar said she learned from her students, too. She was amazed, she said, how they bent the wood to form the frame for the roof of the ski complex. "I didn’t know wood could bend," she said.

Her favorite part of the high-tech city is a simple detail.
"Look at the little sailboats they made, each with its own wake," said Escobar. "They give it life."