The Windshield Viper
Event Location: Cocoa-FL
Competition: Junior Solar Sprint
Division: 7-8 (JSS Blue)
School: Cornerstone Learning Community
Team Size: 3
Amery, Kai, and John
Junior Solar Sprint – Blue Division
Hello! Our team is from Cornerstone Learning Community Tallahassee, FL! Our group includes:
Amery Keller (8th grade), as the Head of Graphic and Visual Arts (2nd year)
John Marty (8th grade), as the Constructive Mechanical Engineer (1st year)
Kai Okui, (7th grade), as the Logic and Creative Mechanical Designer (1st year)
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Photo and Basic Info
Our car is inspired by the red African Bush Viper (see image below). We designed our car with the red, spiked scales of this specific snake. We used alcohol markers and gold paint to add more highlights to our car. We have a mechanism that allows us to move our solar panel lower or higher depending on the sun’s placement in the sky. (The two triangular metal pieces shown above are the prototype version of the final mechanism). With all this in mind, we decided to name our car “The Windshield Viper”.
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Car Details
Components:
- Wheels x3
- Gears x4
- Battery Pack x1
- Motor x1
- Metal Adjuster Pieces x6
- Bolts x2
- Bolt Nuts x2
- Rubber band seatbelt x1
- Solar panel x1
- Comb Binding x2
- Rubber Band (on the wheels) x5
- paint
- pizzazz x100
Measurements:
Length: 25.0 cm
Height: 7.0-8.0 cm
Width: 16.3 cm
Height with solar panel: 8.0-15.2 cm
Mass (without solar panel): 222.50 g
Solar panel mass: 86.96 g
Gear Ratio: 20:40
Front wheels: 1.5 cm
Back wheels: 1.5 cm
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Car Pictures
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Car Pictures
Our design process has been a wild one! We ran into many roadblocks, and although some decisions were easy, others were not. Over time we learned our strengths, and we all knew which problems or for who. Towards the end, we all were super focused on finishing and polishing the project.
Design Log
Here is our design log from early December to mid-April. We unfortunately didn’t have time to work on it for a few weeks, so that is why the last few entries are so much later than the others.
| Date | Time Spent | Activities |
| December 2, 2022 | 1 hour | We came up with the design for the car’s frame and chassis. |
December 16, 2022 | 1 hour | We secured the chassis and built the frame. |
| January 6, 2023 | 1 hour | We double-checked to make sure that everything was as planned, and then we through around some ideas of the tilting of the solar panel. |
| January 13, 2023 | 1 hour | We added the back wheels and refined the motor position and sticked a “Canada” sticker to the bottom of the car. Irrelevant, but entertaining. |
| January 20, 2023 | 1 hour | We added the battery pack and tested its speed. |
| January 27, 2023 | 1 hour | We finally got around to implementing the tilting of the solar panel. We primed the car for painting with white paint. |
| February 3, 2023 | 1 hour 10 min | We started painting snake scales on the car, with alcohol markers and paint. We had pretty much finished, but we needed to test a bit. |
| February 10, 2023 | 1 hour | We had to change our one-wheel drive to three, because the drive was too weak, and it didn’t move at all. |
| April 2, 2023 | 1 hour | At the race, we made some adjustments to try to fix the drift, but we had no luck. |
| April 6, 2023 | 1 hour | We adjusted the car gear ratio from 30:40 to 20:40, and we created the fins for the Dual Fin Comb Binding Alignment System. |
| April 13, 2023 | 1 hour | We added the Dual Fin Comb Binding Alignment System (DFCBAS), which helps steer the car even if it is misaligned. |
Here we have our Chassis drafts for our car. We worked for one class period on drafting, then we got to work building our frame for our chassis.
After our sketches were done, we started making our car and designing it.
Below is an image of the pre-paint car.
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Car Videos
Car Tests
| Power | Weather | Time (sec) | Distance (ft) | Speed (ft/s) |
| Solar | Full Sun | 4.68 | 24.5 | 5.2 ft/s |
| Solar | Full Sun | 4.37 | 25 | 5.7 ft/s |
| Batteries | Full Sun | 4.95 | 25 | 5.1 ft/s |
Thank you so much for taking the time to review our website! It means a lot, and we are ever so grateful!
Sincerely,
The Vipers