Purdue Chem-E-Car
Where chemical engineering meets materials engineering, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. We are an interdisciplinary, 50-member team that is completely student-led and competition-driven. We're always looking for committed, passionate engineers from any major who are interested in research, leadership, and problem-solving!
Overview
Chem-E-Car is a student-led competitive team that researches, tests, and constructs a shoebox sized car powered entirely by chemical reactions. The car must travel a specified distance between 15 and 30 meters, which is given an hour before the start of the competition. We compete against 15+ other university teams at the regional competition every year and if we advance to the national level, we compete with 40+ teams from around the world! Additionally, students can earn 1-2 research class credits each semester, and are required to create a professional research poster, pass a safety training course, and collaborate to create an engineering design package document detailing all the safety, design, and construction features of the final car.
Goal
The goal of the club is to provide undergraduate engineering students the opportunity to gain and develop laboratory skills, experimental design practices (along with implementation), leadership qualities, and creativity. We are a student-led organization that provides research ideas the opportunity to become real. The practices learnt enable our members to be successful in future classes (such as senior design and senior laboratory), industrial internships, undergraduate research under a professor, and their future careers.
Structure
Students earn undergraduate research credit for their contributions, and our members are split into lab groups so experimentation is happening every day during the school year.
Become a sponsor!
Sponsoring Purdue Chem-E-Car is a great way to support a unique undergraduate research environment. We are completely student-led, do not ask for member dues, and are completely sponsorship-supported. We are always looking for new partners, and look forward to decorating our car, poster, video, etc. with your logo! Interested? Click the "Sponsors" tab to learn more!