AMES, Iowa – Two big projects are crowding the Team PrISUm garage this summer.
Walk in and the left side of the garage is full of 4-foot by 8-foot sheets of polyurethane foam. The student-engineers of Team PrISUm are gluing the sheets together to build big blocks that will be machined, sanded and polished into molds. The molds will help team members create composite body pieces for the solar car they’ll race next summer.
On the right, wedged between stacks of foam, is Hyperion, the solar racer that finished second in last summer’s American Solar Challenge, an eight-day, 1,650-mile race from Rochester, N.Y., to St. Paul, Minn. The team is preparing the car for this summer’s Formula Sun Grand Prix.