Steam Car Success!

This past Monday, after hours and hours of work on our model steam car, we were finally able to showcase all of our hard work. Writing the project report describing the processes involved in building the car and the problems we encountered along the way was not exciting, actually running the car in competition was a blast!

However, after checking the car over and taking 2nd in the fastest start-up competition, we encountered a problem with friction when we set the car down to race. Our boiler a

nd turbine system was working wonderfully, getting the front wheel spinning at a considerable rate, but when the first heat started and we put the front wheel down, it slowed down considerably and the car moved at a much slower rate than we had gotten it to move in previous test runs. As a result of this, we took second in the first heat. At first we thought the front wheel, because it was initially spinning so fast, was slipping on the concrete. But after watching more closely during the second heat, in which we also took second, we realized this was not the case, that instead there was friction somewhere which we had not eliminated.

After taking a closer look at the car, we discovered the plastic tubes holding the back wheels onto the axle had somehow been tightened. After loosening these and oiling up the axles once again, the car ran as smoothly and as fast as ever and we won the 3rd heat by a fairly wide margin. Unfortunately, although our car had certainly proved itself to be the fastest, we did not advance to the finals because of the way the competition was structured. But we did run our car concurrently with the final race and were pleased to discover that, had we been in the race, our car would have won by a fair margin.

The extra speed our car displayed, once we fixed the friction problem, I think was due to two heat shields (not pictured) we placed over the boiler which helped to trap the heat and therefore heat the water to a greater temperature and eject the steam at a faster rate. This resulted in a faster-spinning turbine and ultimately in a faster car. For this modification, we received the runner-up award for best modification as well as several other awards based on the appearance of our car, which we had painted red and black.

Overall, our model steam car project was a success in which we were able to solve problems in the moment and implement a few good ideas in order to improve the car and make it our own.

The need for greater organization in iFoundry

So this iFoundry thing is starting to become a bit vexing. There is so much work involved in it and I do not seem to be getting much out of it. This applies to both iFoundry itself as well as the class that goes along with it, ENG 198, which I feel has become too much work for just one measly credit hour. Although meeting with people from the world of work is interesting and potentially helpful, it is difficult to get something out of that because we still lack the technical knowledge to actually apply the principles which are presented to us. But besides that, the iFoundry meetings often seem like a waste of time, not because the leadership of the iTeam is lacking, but because we still seem to have little real direction in what we are trying to do. Because of that, the interest level and consequently the attendance at iTeam meetings has been waning. I feel that our iTeam has done a good job with the tools available to us in order to give some structure to what we are trying to do, but because the overall organization of iFoundry has been lacking, this has been difficult to do. I feel that, at this point, iFoundry has become too much of a time commitment compared to the value that I get out of it. It has been difficult to enjoy as well because of that feeling of lack of progress and motivation. It seems that this would be a much better initiative to start sophomore or perhaps junior or senior year, because by then we would not only have the technical knowledge available to us in order to put the things we are learning to use, but also because we would be much closer to the point in time when we would be ready to enter the working world and use that information. If something doesn't change within the next year regarding the overall structure or purpose of iFoundry, I feel that many students will completely lose interest and drop out of the program, making it much less effective to create a meaningful change in engineering education at U of I and throughout the country.