04-01-2005On their own time, 11 Warsaw Community High School students designed and are building two cars for the Indiana Mathematics, Science and Technology Education Alliance Super Mileage Challenge.
“The majority of the work has been done after school and on weekends,” said Mark Neukam, WCHS technology teacher and supervisor for the group.
The challenge will be held April 24-25 in Indianapolis. Neukam said they will leave for Indianapolis April 24 at 8 a.m. and go to the Vincennes University hangar for technical inspection. The extracurricular group will spend the night in Indianapolis. Gates for the challenge will open 7 a.m. April 25 at Raceway Park, Indianapolis.
According to the IMSTEA Web site at www.imstea.org, “The objective of the competition is to provide Indiana high school students with a challenging and educational activity combining the theoretical aspects of mathematics, science and technology with practical experience in design, fabrication and testing of an actual vehicle.”
Neukam said the challenge involves trying to obtain the most miles per gallon possible for each one-man car, powered by a single cylinder four-stroke cycle engine. To determine mpg, Neukam said, at the starting line the car’s gas tank is filled and weighed. The car runs 10 laps around the track and then the gas tank is weighed again to determine how much gas was used. The mpg then is computed.
Each team tries to run their car as many times as possible for a best average.
There are two classes of competition.
In the stock class, engines are provided to the participants and must be maintained in strictly stock condition. No modifications are allowed. The engines will be sealed prior to delivery to each team, and tampering will result in disqualification.
Engine modifications are permitted in the unlimited class. The modifications allowed are lined out in the rules.
Only one entry per school per class is allowed.
Neukam said this is the fifth year WCHS has participated in the challenge. Last year, Warsaw placed eighth with a mpg of 346.41, while Whitko High School placed seventh with a mpg of 359.53. First place was Homestead High School, with a mpg of 1,155.70, followed by Winamac High School with a mpg of 884.71.
WCHS Senior Tinoy Sriratanakoul has participated in the challenge for three years. He said they started on this year’s challenge in September, getting the ideas and plans together. The hard part is getting the cars’ proposals to the state because the proposals must include detailed blueprints. When it came to the actual building of the vehicles, he said, the hard part was getting the parts and the funding. They had to have sponsors help pay the costs.
“We were just getting by at times,” Sriratanakoul said.
The group’s stock car is the closest to completion as of Thursday. He said the unlimited still has work left on it. “Both of them each have their troubles,” he said of which one is more difficult to build.
And putting the cars together takes many hours per week for everyone. Sriratanakoul said, “I know personally, I’ve put 40-50 hours, proposal-wise, into it.”
Most of the time building it, he said, is spent Sunday afternoons and during some class time.
The hope is, he said, that they will average 350 mpg for the stock car, based on years past. The unlimited may get 400 mpg. That likely will put WCHS’ team in 12th place.
“If things work out well,” said Sriratanakoul, “probably top 10.”
Design and construction of the car is intended to be a student project, performed by the students under the guidance and supervision of adult faculty members. Parts and components fabricated by nonstudents must be kept to a minimum.
Members of the WCHS challenge team are Blake Deaton, Jeremy Ormsby, Landon Cornell, Mercedes Plummer, Daniel Peacock, Drew Houvener, Kyle Messmore, Tony Shilling, James Walton, James Custer and Sriratanakoul.