Once we’d finished our morning procedures, our team gathered with the other teams for the daily all teams meeting. Here, they announce the day’s winners, the starting order, pass out debris that fell off the cars, and gather together as a family, united by solar cars.
With 219 laps up from the previous day, we claimed the day three trophy. We also learned some interesting news. We knew there would be clouds all day and a chance for rain in the afternoon, and the race organizers told us that they may need to end the race early if there is a high chance of rain. What made this so interesting, however, was that if they ended the race early we would not receive penalties for not taking our lunch break. This meant if we plan to take the break late in the day, we may not need to take it at all, letting us free to run as many laps as possible.
Day 4 of the race was different from all of the others, with cloud cover all day long. For all teams on the track, regardless of solar area, this meant the amount of energy gathered was effectively negligible. It would all come down to what was reserved in the battery pack from the previous day. This is where SOCKEYE truly shines. Typically SOCKEYE’s small solar area is balanced by its efficiency, but since solar area was not effective in the clouds, SOCKEYE’s high efficiency allowed it to run more laps on day four than any other car on the track.
We had about 60% of the battery left when starting the day, so we had a large reserve to burn. We started the day slow, as we didn’t know if they would end the race early, but as the day went on we increased SOCKEYE’s speed to an average pace of 37 miles per hour. SOCKEYE’s efficiency worked out well, and we had no trouble keeping up our speed as we silently glided over the track. Though SOCKEYE’s smaller solar area may seem like a strange choice, it has a significant advantage over a car with more solar area (like Jimmy, for example) when under heavy cloud cover.
After the race was done, it was time for the awards ceremony. It started off with wonderful speeches by all the captains of the various solar car teams. Each team had something heartwarming to say. Teams thanked their mentors and parents, gave their appreciation to the challenge organizers, and shared stories of their positive interactions with other teams and how they represent the spirit of the Solar Car Challenge. Then, awards were handed out. We brought the whole team up to claim our first place trophy for the advanced division and took a quick photo. Additionally, the team received the William Shih Award, which is presented to “the team displaying the highest level of engineering excellence”
After enjoying a great meal provided by the Solar Car Challenge and cheering on the other teams claiming awards, we gathered outside to take a couple more team photos and celebrate our accomplishments. After all, over two years of work on SOCKEYE has led to this victory for our team.
Stay tuned everyone, as we are working on one last post to debrief this entire challenge. Keep track of our instagram to see when that launches. In the meantime, we would like to thank everyone who made this possible for us. Ms. Mcguire, Lisa, Josh, and Marva all helped making food, driving us places, doing laundry, organizing logistics, and generally making it possible for us to focus on the challenge itself. We would also like to thank our incredibly talented and driven mentor Alain Semet, who has been with the team since its founding, helping us learn and move forward as we built the car. Additionally, Dr. Lehman Marks, along with all the Solar Car Challenge employees, judges and interns who have made this challenge possible. This has been an incredible experience for the team, and we are glad to have had the privilege to race this year.