{"id":10644,"date":"2012-04-04T14:00:13","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T19:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=10644"},"modified":"2012-04-04T12:31:53","modified_gmt":"2012-04-04T17:31:53","slug":"austin-peay-state-university-physics-students-building-green-race-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2012\/04\/04\/austin-peay-state-university-physics-students-building-green-race-car\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay State University Physics Students building ‘Green’ Race Car"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – The other day, Austin Peay State University physics student Elijah Jensen took out his cell phone to show a picture of his car. The hood was up in the photo, exposing an engine in pieces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s my car\u2019s engine on Saturday,\u201d he said. \u201cI had to take the whole thing apart to fix one little piece. I\u2019m very into fixing my own car, but fixing a car is a lot different than building a car.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"APSU<\/a>

APSU physics students Elijah Jensen and John Walker discuss the half-scale prototype race car frame they designed and built. The next step is to build the full-scale formula SAE racecar. (Photo by Amber Fair\/APSU).<\/p><\/div>\n

But since last September, that\u2019s exactly what Jensen has been doing \u2013 designing and building a car. He enlisted the help of fellow physics student John Walker, and, using NASA Tennessee Space Grant money, the two hope to ultimately create an electric, Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) race car that they can take to compete against other college students around the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve got a lot of engineering done,\u201d Dr. Justin Oelgoetz, associate professor of physics, said. \u201cThey\u2019re about to start recruiting a larger group to help build it. They\u2019ve competed a lot of prototyping. Once we get past a few hurdles, we\u2019ll be ordering a lot of steel and an insane amount of batteries, and they\u2019re going to stat putting together a car.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jensen, who plans to attend graduate school in electrical engineering next fall, came up with the idea last year to build a small, go-cart type electric vehicle. But then he heard about the Formula SAE series, which is an international student design competition, with college students building their own cars to race competitively.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always been a dream of mine to do electric car engineering,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I came up with the idea of maybe building a small prototype. I was talking with a friend of mine, another physics tutor, and he said, \u2018you should talk to Dr. Oelgoetz about it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of the project\u2019s \u201cgreen\u201d focus on electric vehicles, Oelgoetz thought it would be a perfect fit for the NASA grant. Austin Peay is part of the Tennessee Space Grant Consortium, which provides funding for student projects such as this.<\/p>\n

[320left]After getting the green light from Oelgoetz, Jensen approached Walker, a physics student interested in mechanical engineering, about the project. Since September, the two have worked at designing the small race car. The completely vehicle will be a 19-horsepower race car, capable of reaching 80 miles per hour.<\/p>\n

On a laptop computer, Walker pointed to a rendering of the proposed vehicle.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have previous car knowledge, and I\u2019m using that to help design it. I\u2019m trying to finish up the actual mechanical part, I\u2019m trying to trim this down,\u201d he said, pointing to the screen, \u201cand then make it more aerodynamic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two students hope to get a prototype built and running by May, in time for Jensen\u2019s graduation. Then, he hopes to join another Formula SAE group wherever he attends graduate school and face-off against other APSU students at next year\u2019s race.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor next year the goal would be to go to enter it in competitions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For more information, contact the APSU Department of Physics at 931.221.6116.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – The other day, Austin Peay State University physics student Elijah Jensen took out his cell phone to show a picture of his car. The hood was up in the photo, exposing an engine in pieces. \u201cThat\u2019s my car\u2019s engine on Saturday,\u201d he said. \u201cI had to take the whole thing apart to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,7924,7207,262,13633,13628,13632,12248,13629,11092,13631,13630],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-2LG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10644"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10646,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10644\/revisions\/10646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}