Mesa students win awards at national STEM competition [Video]

MESA, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) — Five middle schoolers from Mesa recently brought home two awards from a national competition in Washington, D.C.

Known as the Future City Competition, students are asked to create a model city that showcases their solutions to a citywide sustainability issue.

This year’s challenge asks students to build a 100% electrically powered city with energy generated from sources that keep your citizens and the environment healthy and safe.

The Mesa student’s model was designed after Turkey’s largest city nearly 100 years into the future. “We thought about all the different innovative elements and decided that we were going to add some new things but preserve the old,” said student Shannan Robinson.

The nearly 4-foot model is designed using sustainable materials like old hairbrushes, sink drains and 3D print buildings. “Our model has four different scales, and each of these took about 40 hours,” said Joelle Vandenbark.

Out of nearly 66,000 …