A Sun-Powered Race Between Two Very Different Schools

A "glossy, handsome, streamlined car that looked like a prop for a James Bond movie," said an Associated Press writer of Sunvox, a solar-powered race car built by Dartmouth students. "A Soap Box Derby entry" is how he described the bathtub-shaped version built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At a Swiss-sponsored Tour de Sol race last summer, in which sun-powered vehicles competed at a cautious 35 miles per hour. Mil beat Dartmouth by default. Sunvox was disqualified. But based on looks alone, onlookers might have thought the teams had pitted a mint-condition jo- against .a makeshift Yugo. I hey may also have noted the parallel between the cars' contrasting appearances and the two schools' distinct approaches to engineering edication.

Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering was founded on the principle that engineers should begin by studying the liberal arts. Thayer also began with an emphasis on interdisciplinary study that it maintains today. There is little departmental specialization, and faculty easily cross disciplines in teaching and research.

MIT, on the other hand, has historically offered a technically oriented undergraduate education, and on a much larger scale: engineering majors today number about 2,000, or two thirds of MIT upperclassmen, compared to 148 at Thayer. This highly technical approach includes a well-defined major concentration which puts its bachelor of science graduates at the cutting edge of a given discipline—electrical, mechanical, or civil engineering, for example.

The MIT car was built by undergraduate specialists.The project was masterminded by then-junior JamesWorden, a mechanical engineering student who has immersed himself in the possibilities of solar cars since highschool. In 1986, Worden approached Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Harry West for help with acar he had been working on for a year and which he hadalready entered in the Tour de Sol. What became theMIT team consisted of several engineering students whohad helped Worden the previous year, along with a fewldditional students, including one from MlT's SloanSchool of Management. "Some students worked on the frame, others on the wheels, and others on the electrical system," says West.

Worden's primary concern was performance. "Form followed function," explains Doug Fraser, a research engineer at Thayer. "The MIT, car may not have looked like much, but there was some nice engineering inside." Dartmouth's car, on the other hand, was a "work of art," Fraser maintains. Form and function were intertwined. The aesthetics team-led by Peter Robbie, director of the Hopkins Center design shops—consisted mainly of artists who consulted with engineers about aerodynamics. In addition to engineering and visual arts majors, the Dartmouth crew also included students majoring in biology and in English, as well as a Tuck School business student.

Despite their different approaches to car design, MIT inspired the Dartmouth project. At a meeting in Hanover called by Doug Fraser and by Engineering Professor Horst Richter, MIT Professor West gave a slide show about his school's two years of Tour de Sol experience. From there, Fraser says, the project "took on a life of its own" among students, and faculty mostly advised.

Both the Dartmouth and the MIT car easily managed a 35-mile-an-hour average speed, the maximum allowed in the Tour de Sol. Both had top speeds around 70 miles per hour. But the MIT car managed to finished sixth, while Dartmouth's car officially failed to finish at all. Difficulty with the electrical system on the first day of competition sidelined it for more than the allowable one hour of repairs, and Dartmouth was disqualified.

Was Sunvox's team-sculpted beauty only skin deep? Not according to Fraser. The Green machine continued unofficially and "finished respectably the remaining five davs," he notes. The faulty electrical system was the Achilles heel of what Fraser calls an otherwise "rock solid" Dartmouth entry.

Dartmouth plans another entry in 1989. It already has a good head start: the group will begin with the car that returned from Switzerland. "Everyone knows it will look good," says Eraser. "And, we're pretty sure that it'll finish in the top ten."

The inventors of Dartmouth's solar race car included majors in biology, English and the visual arts.