Chem E Car: Crouching Tiger Hidden Car

Our team participates in an interdisciplinary engineering competition called Chem E car. This involves developing a small car that is both powered by and stopped by a chemical reaction. These reactions must be understood and modeled to come as close to the distance given on the day of the competition along with an amount of water weight also given on the day of the competition. This year at ImagineRIT we will be demonstrating our knowledge of reaction kinetics, battery construction, code, circuits, and mechanical design with our newest generation of the competition car. It is powered by student-manufactured alkaline batteries and stopped with a Vitamin C iodine clock reaction. We will be doing a live run of the car in which we will show off our ability to modify the distance traveled by the car, simply by changing the reactant concentrations in preparation for the actual competition.