Solar Array Repositioning System
Today, we contracted SARS. Also, it looks like we won't take delivery of the car until early next week because of a tsunami and the fact that our dirty old van will need to have its undercarriage steam-cleaned.
At first, when someone said that we needed SARS for the race, we instinctively reached for our Hello Kitty backpacks and felt around for our sterile facemasks. Then,we made friends with a plumber. Little did said plumber know that the 65 and up demographic has a 50% mortality rate, while our age group enjoys a mortality rate less than 1%.
Our plumber friend mostly told us about how he had designed rear seats for Ford Explorers. His stories were voluminous, ranging from woman test drivers to something called a jubilee clamp. While his presence was great, he distracted us from the task at hand, which was mathematics. Nathan solicited Lucas, Marvin!, Lucy, and Matt to help him with the (not so) complex geometry of a right triangle, which proved to be useful as we created a monster--a polyvinyl chloride structure that we called SARS.
Everything Fits!
This structure is, simply stated, a one-axis solar tracker for the array of our solar car. More specifically, it has approximately a 5 to 90 degree elevation range and should allow for simple adjustment and easy set-up and take down. This means that during the race, we can tilt the top shell of our car towards the sun for more power generation when we are stopped. These constraints led us to one thing: large diameter PVC.
Matt, Lucas, Daniel, and Nathan Assembling SARS
It started simply. One of us coughed, and someone else contracted SARS. Before long, most of the team was at some stage responsible for the spread of SARS to the Victoria Hall parking lot. Terry, our plumber friend, was a-fixated on our SARS and felt the need to ward it off with incessant story-telling in a thick but surprisingly mumble-free Aussie accent.
Marvin! Degreasing/Priming the PVC
In between the stories, we (DC Posch, that is) managed to cut massive amounts of (not so) precision-cut piping. Marvin was very skillful with a toothbrush at the task of degreasing and priming all of the joints. With the sheer strength of Lucas, our resident University of Kentucky Solar Car Team representative, we were able to attach these PVC pipes into a massive protein chain bent on destruction of many Asian countries in the year 2003. After completing our masterpiece, we set out to celebrate at our gracious friends', the Tuckwells, who hosted Sasha and Ben before the rest of us arrived in this land.
There, we feasted on rare steak and avocado-themed salad, the former of which our vegatarian girls shied away from. They were unaware that we had contracted SARS and that our celebration was in honor of SARS, and our general nerdy talk about SQUID's, the Czochralski process, and battery technology scared our gracious hosts away from the dinner table. Thus ends the saga of SARS synthesis.
October 10th, 2009 - 02:31
Hello Team – This is Ben’s aunt writing you. What a great blog – lots of photos (and good ones at that), not too much technical stuff, good humor, and pretty good puns. I found the visual gag in the Things that Eat Us photo gallery. I hope the car arrives soon, and ready to race. Best of luck to all of you. God bless – Aunt Harlan
October 10th, 2009 - 08:11
Hey Team – With the Aunts weighing in, I belong to Nathan and am his Aunt Ruth Ann from New York. Having been to Melbourne a long time ago when we thought we might move there, I am enjoying all of your interesting posts and wonderful pictures. I especially love the fact that you guys can actually write and there are complex sentences and well-constructed thoughts throughout! Keep the info flowing and Good Luck to all of you! Nathan, Panther Pond is beautiful in the fall – but we did have a bit of excitement today with a dead tree igniting after it decided to fall on the power line………
October 11th, 2009 - 08:57
Hopefully, you have cleared Australian Customs and are on your way. Good Luck! Branka and I look forward to joining you in Darwin in a few days.
October 11th, 2009 - 12:38
The University of Michigan Solar Team had Saturn Electronics do the PCB work, Visteon did their LED work,
Stanford Team did their own including encapsulation and much more. What a truly talented bunch of young
people! It’s obvious that your families are proud of you.
October 11th, 2009 - 15:29
@John Z
Unfortunately not. The ship was prevented from docking on time because of bad weather, and the next opportunity will be Monday. After that, the container still has to clear customs…. We’re going to try and clear the solarcar separately from the van, because it sounds like they’ll want to steam clean the van. The upshot is that we’re going to have much less time to test the car before the race.
October 12th, 2009 - 07:14
OK Ben and thanks for the update. There are lots of folks here who are interested in your progress! It’s good to see that you are managing to have a great time in spite of the hassles and delays. All the blog pictures and narratives are wonderful.
Z