Event Year: 2024
Event Location: Cocoa-FL
Competition: Junior Solar Sprint
Division: 4-6 (JSS Green)
School: Sumter STEM 4H
Team Name: Sunshine Surfers
Project Name: Sunshine Surfers
Team Size: 4

Sunshine Surfers

Introduction to your car and team

Organization Name

Sumter STEM 4-H – Sumter County, FL.

Team

Addie C – 5th Grade, Lily T – 4th Grade, Danny C- 3rd Grade, Finn T – 3rd Grade

Photo Gallery

Project Log

Date	Task	Time Spent	Team Members	Obstacles Faced	Modifications to car
3/11/2024	First Meeting. Chose our team.	1 Hour	AC, DC, LT, FT	We had to choose our teams and come up with an idea.
3/15/2024	We built our chassis and figured out the gear ratio.	2 Hours	AC, LT, FT	We tried to use bigger wheels but they were too heavy for the motor. Then we chose a bigger gear ratio (6:1) but the gear touched the ground. Ended with a general idea for the car for the next meeting	Used a smaller gear ratio and chose to use the kit wheels
3/18/2024	Built our car	4 Hours	AC, DC, LT, FT	Cut the chassis into a rounded front shape for aerodynamics. Problem 1: Wheels were touching the wood Problem 2: Spacers too far inside the wheels. The car wobbled and won’t drive straight. Problem 3: Car runs but it is pulling left. Car only goes a few feet then curves. Problem 4: The gears are not touching tight enough, causing slippage.	We ended up rebuilding our entire car with a new kit. The materials used were: Balsa wood, straws, styrofoam cup, kcup, and pitsco solar car kit.
3/21/2024	Painting the car	2 Hours	AC, DC, LT, FT	Painting around the motor and inside the cup. Painting the legos, because it needed a lot of coats of paint.	Painted yellow surf board with teal and green stripe. We attached solar panel in prep for trials.
3/21/2024	Solar Time Trials – We build a solar car course to test out the car.	1 Hour	AC, DC, LT, FT	We completed all time trials today. First the car went backwards. We swapped the wires on the motor. The clip fell off the wire and had to get fixed. Lastly, the front of the car had to get fixed.	We had to reglue the front and the lego supports.
3/25/2024	Fixed some of the broken pieces on our car and built our website. Also filmed interviews and took photos of our car.	3 Hours	AC, DC, LT, FT	Today we had to fix some broken and weak parts on our car. Once that was finished we took photos of our car for the website. We also did an interview about our car. Ms. Jenna helped us with our website and edited our interview video with us.	We had to replace the styrofoam cup on our car to a plastic one. The styrofoam cup broke after our trials last week and wasn’t strong enough to hold the solar panel up.

Car Drawings

Car Specifications

Length of Car	29 cm
Width w/wheels	14.5 cm
Width of Solar Panel	12.5 cm
Length of Solar Panel	26.5 cm
Height	12.5 cm
Weight	243 g
Back Wheel Size	4 cm
Front Wheel Size	3.5 cm
Gear Ratio	1:4 or 10:40
Total Cost of Car:	$49

Cost of Car and Components

Items Purchased	Cost
Solar Car Kit	$48
Battery Pack	$1
Straws	Donated
K-Cup	Donated
Foam Cup	Donated
Paint	Donated
Legos	Donated
Hot Glue	Donated

Trials

Solar Panel Time Trials

Trial	Time	Distance	Speed	Conditions	Comments
1	DNR	0	0	Sunny	Went backwards
2	DNR	0	0	Sunny	Didn’t run. The clamp came off the wire
3	7:36	20m	2.72	Sunny	The eye hook got loose. We had to reglue it.
4	7:03	20m	2.84	Sunny
5	8:14	20m	2.46	Sunny
6	7:31	20m	2.74	Sunny

Battery Panel Time Trials

Trial	Time	Distance	Speed	Conditions	Comments
1	17:56	20m	1.14	Sunny	The batteries were older. We swapped the batteries to fresh ones
2	7.09	20m	2.82	Sunny	New batteries were much faster. Afterwards, we had to reglue the front of the car and fix the supports.

Project Reflection

Reflection

We would like to thank our moms for bringing us to practice each week. Thank you to Ms. Jenna for helping us edit the interview, and Mr. Tom (Danny’s dad) for soldiering the clips to our panel and our battery pack.