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OU students won two American Institute of Chemical Engineers competitions and performed well in other events at the regional conference.

A number of Big 12 schools competed, including Iowa State University, Kansas State University, University of Kansas and Oklahoma State University, the returning winners.   
The main event was the Chemical Car Competition. Twelve cars attempted the 50-foot stretch. Each vehicle had to fit in a shoebox and carry zero to 500 milliliters.

OU took two teams and 15 students to the competition. Sam Graff, chemical engineering senior, and Thomas Zerbe, aerospace engineering junior, were part of the “Windmills Work This Way” team that placed first in the performance competition.

“LightsOUt,” the other OU team, placed first in the poster competition, which presented how the car was built, powered and its safety, said Dan Dobesh, chemical engineering junior.
Their car placed third in performance and received the “Most Creative Drive System” award, voted on by their peers, Dobesh said.

The goal of the competition was accuracy, said Su Zhu, chemical engineering junior.

Thousands of labor hours prepared the teams for the competition, Graff said.
The work put into the cars is completely extracurricular, which is beneficial to the learning process, he said.

“You learn more by doing it than actually taking a course,” Graff said. “You just have to commit to time.”   

Preparation was another factor to the multiple wins. “We started well ahead of time, months in advance,” Dobesh said.

The “Windmills Work This Way” team will advance to the national AIChE competition in November, where there will be more cars and the competition will be more stringent, Zhu said.

Last year, the OU car was disqualified for various reasons, Zerbe said. The vehicle was ineligible because of a broken part, safety concerns, fear the car may spill in the area, and making fun of a judge’s appearance.

“We went from no car to winning in two years,” Zerbe said. “This was the first year OU completed the competition.”

The regional conference was March 31 and April 1 at the University of Missouri at Rolla.

The students have taken a lot of precautions this year to ensure their eligibility, Zhu said.

“We are making sure to meet all the standards and the underlying themes,” being fully prepared for any safety concerns or other factors not specifically stated, he said.

Zhu said he would like to form additional teams for next year. The program is open to students of any major.  

Dobesh said that without a computer science major or mechanical engineering major on the team, their car would not have done as well as it did.  

 

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