There are many opportunities and events that would require you to speak about the team. This is a short page highlighting the main things to go over. This is not a "how to sponsorship" page.
Introduction
Your First Words
The intro to the team goes over a few main things:
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Hello, we are the Midnight Sun student design team. We design, assemble, and race solar-electric vehicles. We are currently working on our twelfth vehicle, which is also our second cruiser class. It is designed to look a lot more like a practical, consumer-friendly vehicle. Our goal is to race in the American Solar Challenge in 2018 and World Solar Challenge in 2019. |
Audience Analysis
After a very general introduction, it may be important to include other pieces of information based on the audience. When doing general outreach presentations, our general audiences may include:
- Prospecting UW students & their family - speak about the team demographic, how our team complements school, what they can learn from joining the team
- Grade-school students - speak about the challenge, add on more high-level information about the car
- University administrative tour groups - speak about your learning experience with the team
Audience Questions
Probably where the meat of the conversation will be, the audience will probably ask you questions about the project. Here are a few frequently asked questions about the main subsystems of the vehicle
Q: What is the car made out of?
A: So for this question, we'll answer with MSXI, since we have tangible items to show. The vehicle is built with a carbon fiber monocoque, which is made of two main components. The first is the core material, called Nomex. It has a strong compression resistance, but is weaker when pulled/ripped. The second material we use is carbon fiber. While it has a fibrous texture which becomes very brittle when hardened, it has high tensile strength. Sandwiching a layer of nomex with two layers of hardened carbon fiber create our carbon fiber monocoque. The strength of these materials complement each other, and make up for the weaknesses, creating a very strong and light structural material
Q: How does it work?
A: There are many versions of this question, but the general gist refers to if the solar panels just magically run the motors. For our vehicle, the solar panels power a large battery pack, which then power motors which turn the wheels on the car.
Q: Battery Pack?
A: We use around 1500 lithium ion batteries to create our battery pack. We put them together in a mix of series and parallel to create a pack capable of 14kWh.
Q: How many solar panels do you have?
A: 5m^2 worth
Q: Wow, is this a real car?
A: Yes.