At your left, you will see some old pictures of the car. It's changed a little since then. We have better seats in it, and the heat exchaners (the silver finned things down the back of the frame) have changed locations and color. I'll try to get a more recent pic to put up here. Well, now that I've explained that, on to the good stuff!!!
Well, let's start with some info on the car. Currently, it is a research project at the University of North Texas. It is a joint project under three departments, Engineering, Physics, and Materials Science. The professors in charge of the project are Dr. Mitty Plummer, Professor of Engineering Technology; Dr. Carlos Ordonez, Professor of Physics; and Dr. Rick Reidy, Professor of Materials Science. For the past year, there have been three undergraduate students working on the car. Those students are Michael Ham, Rick Bassham, and yours truly, me. It's been a lot of fun, specially when we go tearing around campus just to check our mail or just for the sake of driving it. Speaking of which, I should prolly give you some of the car's stats. Well, to begin with, it was built on the chasis of a Volkswagon Beetle. All that's left of the beetle is the chasis, steering wheel, wheels and brake system, and the transmission. Obviously, the car uses Liquid Nitrogen as it's fuel. With the current configuration, which is different from the pic, it can travel at approximately 36 miles per hour. It is not quite as efficient as we'd like though . . It currently operates at a ratio of 3 gallons of liquid nitrogen for every 1 mile, or .3 miles per gallon. We think we can solve that with a better engine though and a different heat exchanger set up. Plus we are working on building a truck (hasn't been named yet) that should be significantly better than the car. The truck will be built in an S10. With the motor that we are using on it, it should be able to reach highway speeds, 65-70 mph, and get about a 1:1 ratio of miles to gallons. The cool thing is that this would break the speed record for liquid nitrogen cars. What? We should already hold it cause we are the only one? Well, as much as you'd think so, we are not the only one. There is also a liquid nitrogen car at the University of Washington, and I've heard rumors that a Japanese university is building one as well. I guess that means the idea is catching on, right?