Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Southern Nevada students’ vision gains national attention

Waste-smart design for city of the future takes them all the way to the White House

Hyde Park students

Christopher DeVargas

Sydney Lin, left, Isha Shah, center, and Krishna Patel earned praise at the state and national levels for their Future City.

Click to enlarge photo

A model of the futuristic city of Kilau, created by students at Hyde Park Middle School, is about 4 feet long. The city incorporates Hyperloop and maglev technology for public transportation.

Tech at work in Team Kilau's future city

• Maglev: Trains using maglev technology are equipped with large magnets that lift them off the ground and propel them along the track. Because the train doesn’t actually come in contact with the ground, friction is less of an issue and the train can move much faster and more efficiently than high-speed rail systems that use wheels.

• Hyperloop: Where maglev trains use magnets to overcome the friction of a traditional wheel-based rail system, the Hyperloop, proposed by Elon Musk, tries to eliminate friction altogether. The concept uses maglev technology to levitate a train traveling through a steel tube evacuated of much of its air. The result is similar to outer space: a void allowing for high speeds due to the lack of air resistance.

• Piezoelectricity: Meaning electricity generated by pressure, piezoelectricity is the electric charge caused by certain solid matter being struck, pressed or squeezed. A good example is how some lighters produce their flame, by striking a quartz crystal with a hammer, producing a momentary electric charge that ignites the gas.

Team Kilau may not have won the ultimate prize at this year’s Future City championship, but an argument could be made they took home the next best thing.

Hyde Park students Isha Shah, Krishna Patel and Sydney Lin still marvel at the photo they took with Bill Nye on the White House lawn, the dressed-up middle schoolers standing in front of their model city as the famed “Science Guy” leans into the frame. They were Nevada’s representatives at Future City, a national competition that challenges teams of middle school students to think up new ways to solve problems plaguing the world’s cities.

Last year, the trio from Las Vegas tackled the competition’s theme of waste management. Their city design used a combination of Hyperloop and magnetic-levitation technology for public transport helped along by a trash-compacting system that makes the energy generated by the trash usable.

They named the city Kilau, after the Indonesian word for sparkle.

“The theme of the competition was ‘waste not, want not,’ so we wanted to say something like, our city is so clean the streets are sparkling,” Sydney said.

Future City is more than just a chance to pat students on the back; their ideas are taken seriously. Judges from well-known engineering and technology companies gauge the feasibility of the designs, and some lucky teams have a chance to pitch their ideas in a real setting.

That’s what happened to students from Decorah, Iowa. The students presented research on sustainable buildings to a local hotel chain and received a positive response on a plan to integrate charging stations for electric cars.

“They are heavily backed by people who are actually looking for innovative ideas,” said Meeta Shah, Isha’s mother and the team’s mentor. An architect, she helped the students as they built the model in her home on weekends.

“I would be more of a supervising mom,” she said, explaining that her background came in handy, as she could sketch ideas and help find articles about sustainability.

But the students came up with the design, wrote the presentation and essay, and built their city in a video game and as a physical model. The model ended up being 4 feet long and was made of recycled materials.

“It’s huge,” Shah said.

Hyde Park is known for producing students gifted in fields like engineering and science. The inner-city school’s STEM magnet program is one of the most prestigious in the Clark County School District. Every year, hundreds of students compete to get into the program.

Team Kilau’s first test came in January, putting its model up against projects by students from other schools in Nevada. At a judging event at the Northwest Career and Technical Academy, the team edged Mack Lyon Middle School in Overton for the win. Kilau also took home awards for Best Presentation, Student Choice and Best Physical Model.

From Las Vegas, the students traveled in February to the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C., for the national competition. Competing against thousands of students from schools all over the country, Isha, Sydney and Krishna made their pitch before a panel of STEM industry leaders.

“Our parents and siblings grilled us with questions so we were prepared,” Isha said. “We had practiced so much, we could probably say the pitch in our sleep.”

Back home, Hyde Park students followed the team’s progress through daily announcements and status updates.

Active actors and dancers, Isha and Sydney said they weren’t all that fazed by the high-stakes presentation. It was a different story for Krishna, an avid gamer who said he most enjoyed working with electronics while building the model.

“I just tried to not look at all the people,” he joked.

Team Kilau didn’t win the competition, but took home contest awards for Most Sustainable and for the city design that best incorporated “cultural and historical resources.”

And the presentation at Future City did earn the students the invitation of a lifetime. They were asked to attend the White House Science Fair in April, which at over 130 students, was the largest in history. Team Kilau was the only one from Nevada to be invited.

That’s where they nabbed the pic with Nye and later shook hands with President Barack Obama. And even though they returned without a trophy, they got a few days off from school and a chance to tour the nation’s capital.

“It was the most exciting thing!” Sydney said.

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy