High school solar car competition hums along on the Texas Motor Speedway
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/yahoolatestnews/stories/071509dnmetsolar.3de3...
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FORT WORTH – The roar of revving engines at Texas Motor Speedway was replaced today with a soft hum of race cars powered by batteries and the sun.
High school pit crews fiddled with solar cells and circuits at the 14th annual Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge.
The Winston School of Dallas is one of two Texas teams facing students from New York, Connecticut, Florida, Oregon, Colorado, California, Nevada, Mississippi and Louisiana in a four-day competition that ends Friday. The winner gets a trophy and bragging rights.
"It is a really cool thing," T.J. Dailey, a rising sophomore who worked on the Winston car, the Sun Hunter. "It’s really unique, all the ideas here. They’re just really cool pieces of machinery."
The competition, started by Winston in 1993 with three teams, has since grown to 43 eligible programs across the United States and nearly 20 locations internationally, said Lehman Marks, head of science at Winston.
Race locations alternate between a race track, such as the Texas Motor Speedway, and a long-distance road race each year. Past races have included Round Rock, Texas to New York and Dallas to Los Angeles. Next year’s race is being planned from Dallas to Seaside, Oregon and being sponsored by Dallas-based Hunt Oil.
The cars themselves come in all shapes and sizes. Some cars run on three wheels, other four. Some cars rely on power from a single solar panel. Others pull energy from multiple panels all over the car. Because the cars are hand-built and designed by the students the designs can vary greatly.
“They are high school kids doing what engineers do,” said Louis Glover, physics teacher at W. T. White High School in Dallas. “These are not the AP kids ... These are the kids who took Algebra I multiple times.”
Dallas' W.T. White High School team is a first-time competitor. Their car, Quetzalcoatl, has 50 solar cells on its 5 by 2 meter body and is powered by a 4.5 horsepower motor.
But just how fast do these solar cars go? The minimum speed to compete is 15 miles per hour, but Glover said solar cars can go much faster.
“Some cars, I’ve heard, can do 100 miles per hour,” he said. “But I’ve been telling the kids ‘Remember the tortoise and the hare. This is not a speed race, it’s a consistency race.'”
The winner of the race is the team that clocks the most total laps after four days of racing. Most cars will circle the track anywhere from 60 to 100 times a day. Teams work hard to conserve the most battery power and complete the most laps.
“It’s not just flooring it; it’s about strategy,” Marks said. “Putting your foot on the brake wastes energy.”
Brayan Delgado, 18, is the team captain of the South Plantation High School team in Plantation, Fla. His team was clocking other cars and using advanced math and computer software to try to predict the other teams’ tendencies.
“I remember last year, Winston would have a strategy -- they would go fast for two or three laps and then go slow for a lap,” he said.
Delgado said his team, which took third place last year, has worked hard to get ready for this year and even took the car for a test run in Everglades National Park. "We’ve been dying to do this race again," he said.
Even with fierce competition on the track, event organizers said that one of the ways the program succeeds is by bringing students from all over the country together to learn from each other.
“Yesterday a car from Connecticut fell over. Four teams were there helping it get back up,” Marks said. “It’s not a competition; it’s cooperation.”
Getting to the race can run up quite a bill. Marks said the event itself relies on the support of sponsors s
High school pit crews fiddled with solar cells and circuits at the 14th annual Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge.
The Winston School of Dallas is one of two Texas teams facing students from New York, Connecticut, Florida, Oregon, Colorado, California, Nevada, Mississippi and Louisiana in a four-day competition that ends Friday. The winner gets a trophy and bragging rights.
"It is a really cool thing," T.J. Dailey, a rising sophomore who worked on the Winston car, the Sun Hunter. "It’s really unique, all the ideas here. They’re just really cool pieces of machinery."
The competition, started by Winston in 1993 with three teams, has since grown to 43 eligible programs across the United States and nearly 20 locations internationally, said Lehman Marks, head of science at Winston.
Race locations alternate between a race track, such as the Texas Motor Speedway, and a long-distance road race each year. Past races have included Round Rock, Texas to New York and Dallas to Los Angeles. Next year’s race is being planned from Dallas to Seaside, Oregon and being sponsored by Dallas-based Hunt Oil.
The cars themselves come in all shapes and sizes. Some cars run on three wheels, other four. Some cars rely on power from a single solar panel. Others pull energy from multiple panels all over the car. Because the cars are hand-built and designed by the students the designs can vary greatly.
“They are high school kids doing what engineers do,” said Louis Glover, physics teacher at W. T. White High School in Dallas. “These are not the AP kids ... These are the kids who took Algebra I multiple times.”
Dallas' W.T. White High School team is a first-time competitor. Their car, Quetzalcoatl, has 50 solar cells on its 5 by 2 meter body and is powered by a 4.5 horsepower motor.
But just how fast do these solar cars go? The minimum speed to compete is 15 miles per hour, but Glover said solar cars can go much faster.
“Some cars, I’ve heard, can do 100 miles per hour,” he said. “But I’ve been telling the kids ‘Remember the tortoise and the hare. This is not a speed race, it’s a consistency race.'”
The winner of the race is the team that clocks the most total laps after four days of racing. Most cars will circle the track anywhere from 60 to 100 times a day. Teams work hard to conserve the most battery power and complete the most laps.
“It’s not just flooring it; it’s about strategy,” Marks said. “Putting your foot on the brake wastes energy.”
Brayan Delgado, 18, is the team captain of the South Plantation High School team in Plantation, Fla. His team was clocking other cars and using advanced math and computer software to try to predict the other teams’ tendencies.
“I remember last year, Winston would have a strategy -- they would go fast for two or three laps and then go slow for a lap,” he said.
Delgado said his team, which took third place last year, has worked hard to get ready for this year and even took the car for a test run in Everglades National Park. "We’ve been dying to do this race again," he said.
Even with fierce competition on the track, event organizers said that one of the ways the program succeeds is by bringing students from all over the country together to learn from each other.
“Yesterday a car from Connecticut fell over. Four teams were there helping it get back up,” Marks said. “It’s not a competition; it’s cooperation.”
Getting to the race can run up quite a bill. Marks said the event itself relies on the support of sponsors s
