In engineering class, one can always find people hard at work. Students collect the materials they need and gather around the tables to discuss their project. Design tools are scattered around the room and models hang from the ceiling. At the front, various models are lined up, showcasing different ideas.

The models for this project, however, are part of an unprecedented plan to build something big: a solar-powered car.

Every year, high school students from around the United States compete in the Solar Car Challenge, a distance-based road race with solar-powered cars designed by the students. Engineering students at Allen have been working on a car that they hope to enter into the challenge some time in the next few years.

“This is massive; it’s a multi-year project,” engineering and robotics teacher Greg Burnham said. “This is the second year of the project. We have some of the materials already, but I’m having this new group of students go through and plan, revise [and] refine the idea.”

Advanced Engineering & Design is a class based primarily on students designing and creating project ideas. Rather than following specific guidelines, the students are given more control to plan and envision their own ideas.

“I love it,” junior Taylor Williams said. “We get the teacher’s help, but they don’t do too much. It’s more of the students building everything.”

The Solar Car Challenge is not a race based on speed — it’s a race based on the distance that the car can go—so the students will have to maximize the vehicle’s efficiency.

“What we’re looking for is miles that wheels are on the ground,” Burnham said. “There are limits: you can’t have more than five kilowatt hours of power in your system, so it’s just efficiency. Some of the kids are thinking, ‘We need to go faster,’ but you just want to find the sweet spot where you go at a constant speed, and you go the longest.”

Students in the class use the project as a way to apply their knowledge of engineering by actually building something they design. The class only requires that students design projects, but the solar car is a way of taking their designs beyond the drawing board.

“In this class, they just have to design and present their ideas, but that would be a pretty boring class if you just had to design stuff and turn it in,” Burnham said. “This is a really nice way to deliver the content we need.”

Students are currently modeling the car with hot glue and wood. The design process requires them to take all factors into consideration.

“It takes a lot of physics and engineering,” Williams said. “To design a car you have to have all the systems work together, and you need to know how to make the crumple zones, the parts at the front of the that absorb the blow. With the frame, different bars go in different places and have different supports, so you have to know where to put it.”

Most of the car will be built by the students, except for certain parts such as the motor and the solar panels.

“They don’t design the panels or the motors, but they design the system it sits in,” Burnham said. “That’s actually kind of how industry works though; Texas Instruments doesn’t go out and design everything that goes inside of its microchips or products, they subcontract it out to other companies. It really helps teach them that part of the industry, too.”

Burnham also acknowledges the difficulty that comes with a project of this scale.

“The hardest part sometimes is just keeping things moving,” Burnham said. “We have to plan everything out before we even do the first step, because we have to know where everything’s going to be in the end. It requires a lot of foresight.”

Although the solar-powered car is currently in design, Burnham expects that there will probably be a rolling electric car by the end of this school year.

“We’ll probably be successful in building the car in the long run, but you have to look at it from a teacher’s perspective,” Burnham said. “I’m using this as a vehicle to deliver the curriculum, and they get the curriculum either way because they have to do the design and planning. It would be nice to have a finished product, but even if there isn’t, the value of the project isn’t diminished.”

Regardless, students such as Williams enjoy being able to develop their skills that are applicable in the engineering field.

“It’s sort of a challenge,” Williams said. “The purpose of the car is to compete in the race, and also show that we can solve this problem. I’m very hopeful about how this is going to turn out.