Solar Sprint Cars

Problem

In the United States, we use a significant amount of nonrenewable energy in the form of gasoline to power our vehicles so we can get to work, the store, vacation, or just about anywhere we go. As a
country, we need to come up with an efficient way to power our vehicles that will reduce our dependency on oil products and will also lower the amount of air pollution that is emitted from driving our current automobiles. If students all over the United States would take the time and get some background information on a renewable resource and design a vehicle that is powered by some
renewable source of energy, there could be a new kind of vehicle that would reduce our dependency of oil and also reduce the pollution caused by the automobiles that we drive today.

Design Challenge

As a member of a product development team, student are to design and build a solar powered vehicle that will be entered into a race. There are two different components to the Solar Sprint Challenge: Speed and Design.

Speed Race:

The top fastest cars after all of the timed trials are completed will compete in the final
“head-to-head” race to determine first-, second-, and third-place winners. The goal of the design challenge is to win a single elimination bracket where the winner of each race will move on to the next race until there is only one vehicle that has not lost a race.

Design Component: 

Each car will be judged on the merits of quality craftsmanship, unique concept, and overall aesthetics, including appearance, engineering innovation, and originality of materials used.

During the solar sprint car challenge students will:

• design, build and race solar powered cars using hands-on engineering skills and principles of science and math,
• develop teamwork and problem solving abilities,
• investigate environmental issues,
• and gain hands-on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills

This challenge is designed to support the instruction of STEM exploring topics such as alternative fuels, engineering design, and aerodynamics.