Auburn Hills, Michigan (PRWEB) February 10, 2012
Patti Engineering, Inc. – A control systems integration company based in Auburn Hills, MI with offices in Massachusetts and Texas, served as a Special Award Sponsor for the 2012 Michigan Regional Future City Competition which took place January 30, 2012 at The Suburban Collection in Novi, MI. Patti Engineering sent a team of electrical engineers to review and judge the entries.
Hazel Park Junior High School from Hazel Park, Michigan was the recipient of the Patti Engineering “Best use of Automation Technology” award for their implementation of automation technology in their futuristic Solar City design. Teacher Susan McQueary and her team of 25 earth science class students all worked together as a team building, researching and putting together their final project.
The Future City Competition challenges students to design a city of the future – and have fun doing it. The overall national theme was Fuel Your Future: Finding New Ways to Meet Our Energy Needs and Maintain a Healthy Planet.
This program was designed to promote technological literacy and engineering to sixth, seventh and eighth grade students. The program fosters an interest in math, science and engineering through hands-on, real world applications and helps students better understand the practical applications of mathematical and scientific principles.
From start to finish, volunteer engineers, scientists, teachers and parents mentored the student teams to build their cities. All cities were required to display residential, commercial and industrial areas, power plants, transportation systems, community services and communication systems. Other issues addressed were environmental controls, traffic density, taxes and operating budgets.
According to McQueary, teamwork played a huge role in making decisions and finding the research information needed to build and put together their very own futuristic city. Cooperating with each other and coming to the best solutions is a hard task to accomplish with so many opinions at stake. Focus groups were designed so that opinions would be shared, valued and looked at as possibilities to the perfect solution. In the end, each of the 25 students on the team had a hand in putting together their “Solar City” to bring to the competition.
These students are very proud of their own work, and the presenters were the most proud of what they have accomplished. Being young engineers for the first time, in front of engineers questioning them on their work, made them work harder. They are our future, commented McQueary. Student presenters Erin Thomson ONeill, Jeremy Shields, and Tyler Santwire created the presentation and were able to answer the appropriate questions for Patti Engineerings team of judges.
According to Ken Kutchek, vice president of operations at Patti Engineering, Hazel Park Junior High School earned the Patti Engineering Best use of Automation Technology award based on the review of their concepts and design. The automation technologies planned for Solar City that stood out were:
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