Future City Engineering

What a busy week it was last week! Joel is in a Future City Engineering class preparing for the regional competition in Philadelphia. He's been busy making the parts of his model and reading through information for his research paper. I've been helping him with finding sources - I LOVE research, however it has been very time-consuming and much of it is way over our heads!!! To understand what this is all about, click on the title of this post and it will take you to the future city engineering website!

His paper has to describe a self-sufficient, contained living space that conserves, recycles and reuses it's own water with minimal or no use of municipal water and no water discharge. The idea is to not bring any water in, no water out - just to continually reuse the same water. The technologies of today can solve some of the issues, but not all. He has to delve into the technology that is on the horizon in the future. We have been researching self-sustainable homes that are "outside the grid" however, there is not a lot of detail on the water systems. Obviously, there has to be rain catchment and compost toilets and reuse of "gray water". Thankfully his city is located in Hawaii where there is substantial rain fall. This has been an interesting topic to research!

When he signed up for this class, I had no idea what he (and all of us) were getting into! It is very, very highly centered on technology and math and science. Not our strong points! Joel is being very, very stretched! He's an excellent writer, artist and very creative person - not so into math and science!

But maybe this is changing him a little bit..... for his birthday this year, he wants to go to the Franklin Institue in Philly.... a Science museum of all places!!!!!!!!