formerly University of Missouri-Rolla

Phonathon 2010 & Unveiling of SolarMiner VII

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Phonathon 2010

We would like to thank all Alumni and Friends that helped us raise $20,218 of pledges in this year's Phonathon. The team exceeded the sum raised in last year's phonathon by almost $3,000!  We appreciate the donations. This money will help us build a car worth running the number 42!

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Unveiling of Solar Miner VII


We would like to invite all friends and supporters of the Missouri S&T Solar Car Team to the unveiling of Solar Miner VII on March 13th at 3 PM. We are proud to present our latest car in Leach Theatre. Be one of the first people to see the next generation of the Solar Car starting the race with the number 42 in the American Solar Challenge 2010! With improved aerodynamics and chassis we are once again racing to bring home the cup!  A sneak preview of our 1/4 scale model is below:

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Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

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Tweets from 42!
Now you can follow the teams progress in building SolarMiner VII through Twitter. We will keep you up to date with all work steps. During the 2010 American Solar Challenge we will post live from the race.




Be a official 42 Fan on Facebook!
Join our Fan community on Facebook and check out the latest pictures from the building process of SolarMiner VII and awesome never seen before pictures from past cars and races. The Fan page is a great way of keeping up to date with current team events!


Summer Update

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Car Showings: 
This summer has provided several opportunities for the Solar Car to catch some rays.

Rolla Summerfest
Soon after the spring semester ended the Solar Miner VI was back on the road.  In the first week of June we were able to reach out to the community and allow them to see what it really takes to build a solar car.  In this picture is Clinton Guenther and Christina Jung talk with the crowd about the past, present and future of the solar car.
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Kansas City Student Send-Off Party
This July we traveled to Lee's Summit help show our support for the students of Missouri S&T as well as our great Alumni Association.  Here you can see the displays set up and a few members preparing for the event to start.
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Summer Aerospace Camp
The last 2 weeks of July we were invited to show the car to several groups of inquisitive campers as well as provide solar panels for other activities.  The groups were given the opportunity to see a solar car up close, ask questions and even pretend to drive it.

Solar Miner VII: 
Despite the summer months, work on Solar Miner VII still continues.  So far we have several body designs to work with thanks to Andrew Sourk.  SM VII will be powered by Sunpower A300 cells and will be using batteries to be donated by Kokam America to store the power.

A special thanks to Sourk and Kokam for their contributions.  

Regulations Announced

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Today the North American Solar Challenge released an initial version of the regulations for the upcoming 2010.

http://americansolarchallenge.org/event/nasc2010/tech/NASC2010Regs20090505.pdf

As these are an initial revision, questions and comments are encouraged by NASC.

Earth Day

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As part of Missouri S&T's annual Earth Day celebrations, we had Solar Miner VI out in front of the Havener Center and let the kids get in it. We also had two students, Adam Lewis and Cody Massar, showing off an older car at the Missouri Energy Summit in Columbia.

Clinton Guenther with kids.
Clinton Guenther showing off the car.

On Friday Cody Massar and Daniel Welty, along with two members from the Solar House Team, Luke Sudkamp and Cory Brennan, and Dr. Hirtz, the Interim Director of the Center, presented during the lunch for the University's Engineering Advisory Board.  We discussed how both teams work to improve systems related to renewable energy problems. Covering production, storage, use, and optimization, the presentation went very well. Some of the members attending included high ranking officers of both the University and well know corporations.

Cody Massar talks to Bob Kruse from General Motors about the Solar Car.

The whole University of Missouri system has recently become very focused on becoming "Green," especially here at Missouri S&T. The E3 program is the result of this. We of course are happy to see the name recycled from our second car, E-Cubed, that raced in 1995. It was our last attempt at a composite chassis, and was destroyed unceremoniously after its competition. As our heaviest car, we decided to never use that much epoxy again. Consequently Solar Miner weighed half as much.

As part of this, we will be attending the Energy Summit at Mizzou on April 22nd and 23rd. More information about that can be found here.

P.S. I like our logo better.

Final Phon-A-Thon Results

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It took some time to get the totals, but here they are.  Tuesday night brought in $760 in pledges.  This brings the final total to $17,318.  We thank you all for helping us have a successful phonathon this year.

Monday's Results

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To start off the second and last week of Phonathon this year, the night's total donations were $535. This brings the total to $16,558. In case you were wondering, we did not call last night because of the Super Bowl.

Thursday's Results

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To finish up the first week of calling, we received $450 in pledges. The week's total was $16,023. Clearly as we are over halfway through, we have gotten most of the pledges, so the nightly totals will not be as high.