04/09/20 - Our Answers - Entry 18

  Q: What is your target speed for the car?

A: We hope to go under the 1 second mark (for a 20m track), which is quite unlikely but we trying to get there nonetheless! For reference, the world record holder is Team Infinitude, a professional class team who achieved 0.916 seconds on the 20m track.

Q: Why cars and not flying planes?

A: Great question! I’m not sure. I suppose its easier to measure the time on the race track and create lanes. It also could reduce variability with wind or ventilation affecting race times. You could also come across the issue of how to fly it. Flying planes in this competition would be incredibly cool, and could give an opportunity for new designs and inspiration from a different no-go-zone. Planes are cool but they would be harder to make and time like we said, but we are trying to make aspects of our car quite like those of jets and birds.

            Q: How can you work help our battle against climate change? Is there something you could do to tweak the project to consider this?

A: We already put effort into trying to make how we work more eco-friendly, but there’s much more we can do. Sustainability is one of our key values (you can find them on our website) and in future we’ll try all we can to prevent further climate change. We’re taking more notes on the computers rather than paper and we constantly are trying to decrease the carbon emissions and waste produced by some of our work. F1 in Schools isn’t the most eco-friendly thing as we race the cars with CO2 canisters and there is some CO2 emission from this as well as the coach journeys there and back, but we are still trying to be more eco-friendly in other ways. We might do a wave video about this in the future. We also have a big project we’re working on which will help combat climate change which we might tell you about in a couple of weeks so keep your eyes peeled for that!