Solar Car Challenge

Once you’ve registered your teams online, sign up to attend one Coach Information/Car Kit Pick Up Meeting. This year all car kits, coach’s manual and teaching materials will be distributed in person at the coach meetings hosted in  at Clark Public Utilities. We are offering two dates at different locations. The Community Room: 1200 Fort Vancouver Way, Vancouver, WA 98663 or Operations Education Center: 8600 NE 117th Ave., Vancouver, WA 98668. Dates in registration.

• Ideas for teaching structure / milestones
  • Fossil Fuels vs Renewable Energy
  • Understanding the functions of the car parts
  • Build a car that rolls (manually, no motor)
  • Panel placement and relationship to sun (light source)
  • Aerodynamics
• Create  a scope/sequence for time management

• Send supplemental documents to parent/guardian:
  • Event map
  • Event schedule
  • Team Number
• Go over qualification checklist (page 63 and 64 in the Teacher and Judging Guide)
• Prepare your team for interview questions (page 68 and 69 in Teacher and Judging Guide)
• Have students/chaperones pack snacks and/or lunches.
• Be sure students have packed team poster, or electronic presentation, and all engineering notebooks to bring to the challenge.
• Coaches of teams in the first four heats in the Elementary School division will be notified ahead of the competition. These teams will have priority at the Qualifying table.
• Pack a kit of supplies/materials for emergency repairs.

Part of the engineering process is to look at everyday items and find alternative uses for them. Modifications of the solar car are allowed, but with a cap of no more than $10.00 it will take some outside the box thinking to get a leg up on the competition. Here are some examples of inexpensive items that can be used on the hybrid cars.

The level of participation is exciting! We appreciate the enthusiastic response to the Solar Car Challenge. While we would love to include all teams in the event, the venue and time constraints simply will not accommodate everyone interested. We’ve had to make the difficult decision to limit the number of teams that can compete at the county-wide event. The limit is 10 teams, per school, in the grade divisions (elementary and middle school). This will ensure that all schools are represented. Each school conducts their team participation differently, so it is up to you to determine which teams will advance to the challenge. Please see below some best practices to help in your team selection. Please do not hesitate to reach out for ideas on how to make the pre-qualifying experience valuable for your students.

• Refer to page 35 and 36 in your Activity and Judging Guide for suggestions on how to set up conditions for the race
• Refer to page 56 to 71 in your Activity and Judging Guide for judging criteria
• These should be held as close to the race as possible to provide students enough time to engage in the engineering design process – cars should be race ready

• Create a rubric relevant to your classroom goals or borrow the rubric on page 66 in the Activity and Judging Guide to review and score student engineering notebooks
• Build classroom activities around student engagement in the engineering notebooks
• Review student progress on engineering notebooks and select students that have the most detailed notebooks

• Create a rubric relevant to your classroom goals or borrow the rubric on page 67 in the Activity and Judging Guide to score student interviews
• Prepare students with interview questions on page 68 and 69 in the Activity and Judging Guide
• Invite school volunteers to support students in prepping for interviews (great option if you have a steady group of volunteers)
• Prepare a panel of judges to perform mock interviews with student teams

Select students that are most engaged in the process and have demonstrated excellence in the three categories above

One Saturday, in February, from 8:00 AM to Noon, student teams, their families and/or their coaches are invited to Clark Public Utilities Electric Center for additional help and support with the Solar Car Challenge. Employee volunteers from Engineering, Information Technology, Fleet, Energy Services, and other departments are available to assist with:

• Design and Engineering challenges
• Troubleshooting
•  Practice runs
• Interview Questions
• Presentation Review
• and more

The date is released each October for the Solar Car Challenge season.

4^th Grade:

“Students are expected to develop an understanding that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents or from object to object through collisions. They apply their understanding of energy to design, test, and refine a device that converts energy from one form to another. The crosscutting concepts of patterns; cause and effect; energy and matter; systems and system models; interdependence of science, engineering, and technology; and influence of engineering, technology, and science on society and the natural world are called out as organizing concepts for these disciplinary core ideas. In the fourth-grade performance expectations, students are expected to demonstrate grade-appropriate proficiency in asking questions, developing and using models, planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, constructing explanations and designing solutions, engaging in argument from evidence, and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information.”

• 4-PS3-2: Make Observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents.
• 4-PS3-4: Apply scientific ideas to design, test, and refine a device that converts energy from one form to another
• 4-ESS3-1: Obtain and combine information to describe that energy and fuels are derived from natural resources and that their uses affect the environment.

3-5^th Grade Engineering Design:

“The crosscutting concepts of patterns; cause and effect; scale, proportion, and quantity; energy and matter; and systems and systems models are called out as organizing concepts for these disciplinary core ideas. In the fifth-grade performance expectations, students are expected to demonstrate grade-appropriate proficiency in developing and using models, planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, using mathematics and computational thinking, engaging in argument from evidence, and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information; and to use these practices to demonstrate understanding of the core ideas.”

• 3-5-ETS1-1: Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
• 3-5-ETS1-2: Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
• 3-5-ETS1-3: Plan and carry out fair tests in which variables are controlled and failure points are considered to identify aspects of a model or prototype that can be improved.

Middle School:

“In the physical sciences, performance expectations at the middle school level focus on students developing understanding of several scientific practices. These include developing and using models, planning and conducting investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, using mathematical and computational thinking, and constructing explanations; and to use these practices to demonstrate understanding of the core ideas. Students are also expected to demonstrate understanding of several engineering practices including design and evaluation…..

By the time students reach middle school they should have had numerous experiences in engineering design.  The goal for middle school students is to define problems more precisely, to conduct a more thorough process of choosing the best solution, and to optimize the final design….

 Improving designs at the middle school level involves an iterative process in which students test the best design, analyze the results, modify the design accordingly, and then re-test and modify the design again.  Students may go through this cycle two, three, or more times in order to reach the optimal (best possible) result.”

• MS-PS1-3: Gather and make sense of information to describe that synthetic materials come from natural resources and impact society
• MS-PS3-5: Construct, use, and present arguments to support the claim that when kinetic energy of an object changes, energy is transferred to or from the object.
• MS-PS4-2: Develop and use a model to describe that waves are reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through various materials.
• MS-ETS1-1: Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principles and potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions.
• MS-ETS1-2: Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
• MS-ETS1-3: Analyze data from tests to determine similarities and differences among several design solutions to identify the best characteristics of each that can be combined into a new solution to better meet the criteria for success.
• MS-ETS1-4: Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.