Empowering Student Innovation for a Clean Energy Future
CJ Racing Rodgers Middle Magnet School
We chose to make our car out of Balsa wood because it is lighter. The sheet of Balsa wood weighed 21g before we cut it and 12g after with paint. Designed the body of our car to be aerodynamic to reduce wind resistance.
Used Lego pieces as the mount for the solar panel. Its angle is adjustable and placement due to Lego pins that go through holes in the Lego beams.
The weight of the material we use for our chassis makes a difference because we want our car to be as lightweight as possible so that there is less weight pushing down creating friction and the motor can spin the wheels faster with less resistance.
The gear ratio is 1:4. With the drive gear (10) on the motor and the driven gear (40) on the axel/wheels. This combination seems to work better with the PITSCO 4cm wheels and one rubber band.
Sketched out the design for our car on a piece of paper and then traced it on the wood and cut the wood.Cut larger holes in our wheels to make them lighter. All the materials contribute to the car’s weight and the lighter the wheels are, the less friction they produce on the ground, so they are easier for the motor to turn and require less energy to spin faster.Chose to use a book comb to hook onto the guide wire.Soldered power switch and button on chassis
Car Specs:
Frame, Weight: 12g
Back Wheels and Axel, Weight 17g
Motor, Weight 40g
Battery Pack, 6g
Front Wheel, 1g
Solar Panel, 100g
Our axels are made of steel.
Material cost:
PITSCO Ray Catcher Solar Vehicle Kit $48, PITSCO AA Battery Holders $1.35, (Comb, Spiral Paper Clip, Lego Pieces for Solar Pannel Mount, Nylon Pin, Switches) approximately $10. The materials for the car cost around $60.
2 thoughts on “CJ Racing Rodgers Middle Magnet School”
Great design! And you both thought about all the little things lot of the other teams ignored. I would have loved to see drawings on how you came up with the design and a list of some of the time trials you did. I bet it’s really fast. AWESOME job!
Great design! And you both thought about all the little things lot of the other teams ignored. I would have loved to see drawings on how you came up with the design and a list of some of the time trials you did. I bet it’s really fast. AWESOME job!
This car has so many great design ideas! I bet it is really fast!