Model Solar Car Challenge
Kindly sponsored by Shell Refining Clyde
—2nd Place - Well done—
4 September 1999
Year 9 Design and Technology designed and constructed model solar cars to race in the
NSW Model Solar Car race and hopefully gain a good enough place to represent
NSW in the International Race in Adelaide.
Each high school in NSW was invited to construct a maximum of two cars to be raced
at the University of NSW on Saturday 4th September.
69 cars from 41 high schools registered. It is not an easy task to design and
construct these cars. Of the 69 registered entries 42 cars were raced on the day,
two from Parramatta High School.
Many of you at PHS have seen our school track. The actual race track has two
lanes so that two cars can race side by side. The only power to drive the cars
comes directly from the available sun. There are no batteries.
If there is cloud, less energy reaches the solar panel so the car goes slower.
A bit like a flat battery on a remote control car.
16 students in the D&T class attempted to construct 5 different cars.
We chose the best two and concentrated on them.
Come the Saturday of the race and cloud was predicted. Oh no! BUT, it stayed
mostly sunny, and poured rain on Sunday. The first sunny race day for 6 years.
Besides our car jumping off the track, burning rubber, being the cause of a
fantastic crash, having shadow on the panels due to a design error and the
motor jumping off the drive gear, our cars went extremely well.
Did I mention our place? We just missed coming first. We came second. An
absolutely fantastic result. The fastest car, from Dubbo Christian School was
23.05 seconds, whilst our car achieved 23.54 seconds. Not much in it!
There was lots of nail biting. We had to have the cars checked to ensure they complied
with strict ruling on sizes. Then we had to time trial the cars. In the time trials
we were ranked 15th and 16th out of the 42 cars. Heaps more nail biting and
alterations changed our ranking.
The elimination rounds started. Each round half the cars are knocked out.
Suddenly we were in the race to determine who was to race for the first 4 places.
To get through we had to race last year's winning car.
Next thing we knew, we were racing for 1st/2nd place. Almost made it but not quite.
We would have to be happy with 2nd place, $500 prize money and 3 plane tickets.
Where to next?
Adelaide for the international championships. The top 4 cars from each state,
along with international cars, race each other. The event is aimed to coincide
with the full size solar cars racing Darwin to Adelaide
(these cars are worth up to 6 million dollars each!)
Congratulations to 9DT6. Very well done and the best of luck for the internationals.
Special mention should be made of the 4 students who spent a full Sunday and
many lunch times trialing our cars and attended the race day at the University of NSW.
- Mirza
- Shannon
- Harshul
- Edward
Thank you to our sponsor Shell Refining Clyde, without whom we would not have
been able to purchase materials and replace the broken solar panel!
When you consider some of the other schools who entered the competition you can see
that it was a very tough race and a great accomplishment by Parramatta High.
Again-very well done.
Mr M.Dabbs
(And of course, congratulations and well done to Mr Dabbs for all his enthusiasm, time
and effort...Ed.)
Return to TAS faculty page.
