UMaine’s ChemE Car Wins Regional Competition- Going On to Nationals in PA!> April 5th, 2008

The UMaine ChemE Car team placed first in the car competition as well as first in the poster competition at the regional competition and plans on traveling to the national competition in the fall.

See a video of the competition on YouTube.

The objective of the ChemE Car Competition is to provide chemical engineering students with the opportunity to participate in a team-oriented, hands-on, design and construction of a small chemical-powered model car. The car is powered with a chemical energy source that carries a specified load over a given distance and stops. This competition also allows students to become actively involved in a professional society and increase awareness of chemical engineering among the general public, industry leaders, educators and fellow students.

The ChemE Car is a model car designed and built by students. The car entered in a regional competition and the top two teams from each regional competition have the opportunity to travel to the national competition. The regional competition this year was at MIT and the national competition will be in Philadelphia in the fall.

The UMaine ChemE Car team was made up of 8 seniors, 2 sophomores and 2 freshmen. Dr. John Hwalek was our faculty advisor. We used a hydrogen fuel cell as our propulsion mechanism and an iodine clock chemical reaction to break a circuit as a stopping mechanism.

The team is also responsible for producing an informative poster that goes along with the car, outlining all of the background information of each mechanism of the car.