ELIZABETH WILSON

As dozens of students proved recently, it's relatively easy to harness common chemical reactions to make a small vehicle go. The hard part is making it stop when you want it to.

Powered by anything from baking soda and vinegar to fuel cells, pint-sized cars built by undergraduate student teams from universities nationwide were pitted against each other at the annual Chem-E-Car competition, held last month at the national meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in San Francisco. The students' task: Design a car that runs on chemical energy, carries a certain load, goes a certain distance, then stops. As an added complication, they are told the distance their cars will have to travel and the size of their loads only right before the contest.

Sometimes spitting gas or brewing internal bubbles, cars with names like Hog Guzzler and Viking Machine lurched, careened, and inched down the 62-foot racecourse. Microphone in hand, Robert P. Hesketh, chemical engineering professor at Rowan University in New Jersey, emceed the event while hundreds of students--including an enthusiastic contingent from the University of Puerto Rico--cheered the vehicles on.

Unpossible Contraption, a hydrogen-cell-powered car created by chemical engineering students at the University of Dayton, stopped four inches from the finish line, closer than any of the other 31 entries. Unpossible, which cost $334, more than paid for itself: The students took home a $2,000 prize, as well as a trophy.

Despite its winning performance, the car's behavior was difficult to calibrate, said Daphne R. Brenner, a senior chemical engineering student at the University of Dayton and president of the student AIChE chapter there. After charging the fuel cell for 30 seconds, "sometimes it would go 50 feet and sometimes 100 feet," she said.

Michigan Technological University's camouflage-covered, fuel-cell-run mini-MULE came in a close second, stopping within 10 inches of the finish line.

Third place went to Florida Institute of Technology, while Northeastern University received a plaque for most creative drive train.

Chem-E-Car has been an AIChE tradition for five years, growing from an event with few entries the first year to a meeting highlight that packs hotel ballrooms. "There's been a grassroots excitement," Hesketh said.

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