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1st Place

Jessica Kaskie

Dunbar Middle School

Lubbock

Turning Dreams into Reality

     For thirty years, (1976-2006) engineers have been changing lives in many ways. They have found ways to make transportation more efficient, better ways to build structures such as the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, and accomplished structures such as the New World Trade Center.

From building a McDonalds to a submarine, or even a new style of shoes, people first need to imagine their dreams turning into realities. Do you think that the first man on the moon was the only person to dream of flying to a new place where no other man had been before? No! There were thousands of citizens that dreamed of what one man did. That is not even including all the managers, agents, engineers, and television networks that participated in capturing the event.

There have been many discoveries that can be linked to man entering space. For example, people dreamed of launching satellites into space for technology purpose. With these satellites in orbit, we can watch the TV around the globe, supply cameras that are used for the government, and see talk shows on computers worldwide. Many people thought that these new breakthroughs in technology were impossible. There will be an expedition to Mars soon. About ten years ago, I’ll bet that you would’ve thought it was impossible to accomplish. I mean, that’s like somebody saying there’s going to be a mission to Jupiter soon. How would we be able to land on a gas planet without any heat? It would be difficult, but I’m positive it’s possible to achieve.

Somebody had to come up with an idea to keep everybody cool in the summer while watching baseball in the new stadium, the Astrodome. To do this, engineers had to solve a big problem. With an open ceiling, how could you air condition a place that is supposed to hold thousands of people? It was done! Around the same time, grocery stores developed the same idea and used it to keep everybody cool in a place with doors opening and closing all the time.

Extremely tall buildings such as the New World Trade Center in Russia are difficult to build. You have to think of an efficient way to get people from the bottom of the building, to the top, and make the new structures so it will not sway in the wind.

Engineers also had to think of a better way to transport people from one place to another. Sense there was no more room for subways, or any room on the surface, somebody thought of making the roads underwater. This way saved a lot of room, but how are they going to get a road underneath the massive weight of millions of gallons of water? Yet again, engineers found a way, and another dream turned into a reality.

Scientists have been coming up with all sorts of clever ideas that have been making our lives easier in the past thirty years, and they will continue for the next thousand.