Solar Car

To learn more about the team visit their page here.

​

I started working the University of Kentucky Solar Car Team back in January 2018 when a friend of mine introduced it to me during one of our shared lectures. The team was in the process of building their latest car, dubbed Gato Del Sol VI, and were looking for other students to join the team and help get the car ready for a race scheduled for later that summer. I immediately got hands on experience with building the car from doing body work to soldering components together on team designed PCBs and I was hooked.

The first big project I undertook with the team was replacing the wires that helped power the car with copper tabbing. The wires that were previously being used would end up being crushed by the thin body design of the car. We spent approximately 1-2 weeks gluing the copper to the upper half of the car and then soldering it to the solar panel connections. As my team with the team progressed I eventually started working on my own design projects. One of my first designs involved a board we already had. The board had some components that we needed to connect some tubing to but the layout made it difficult to make those connections. My design was the daughter board of the original board. The daughter board was created on Eagle. The board was finally manufactured in my final semester with the team and was used in their most recent race that they won.

​

Apart from my electrical experience, I also worked as the team's Outreach Chair. In this position I would help the team set up outreach events with different STEM groups around the state of Kentucky. For these events our team would bring our car and talk with participants about the science of the car and the work we put into it.