2009 Chemical Reaction Car Competition

Members: Joseph Cuellar, Dominic Liserre, Taylor Liserre, Andrea Stramler

The Group

We used Baking Soda and Hydrochloric Acid to power our car

The HCl was 12M and we used the equation to calculate the maximum pressure for our car

For each run we used approximately 11.75mL of HCl and 12.01g Baking Soda to have a pressure of 4.9 atm

Reaction Chemistry

OHCONaClHClNaHCO 223

Our Car Design

Each run had the exact same amount of HCl and Baking Soda, but yielded a different result each time.

Our best run went 20 inches over with no spew and the worst was 12 feet away with no spew

Testing Results

Overall, the car ran well, but inconsistently. We had no spew and a powerful reaction. There were a few variables that had to do with inconsistency which could be fixed in the future. The first problem we had was sealing the bottle completely. This was solved by taping the bottle where the lid screws on. Even during the final competition, we had some issues with improper seals. Another problem we had was with dropping the baking soda into the bottle. At first, we used a chemwipe to drop the baking soda into the bottle but we learned that the chemwipe was clogging the release valve. We solved this problem by pouring the baking soda in without the chemwipe. In the future, we would work on sealing the bottle properly and making sure the wheels were attached properly, to avoid flipping our car again. Unfortunately we did not get bonus points for flipping the car, or for going off road. Some redesign ideas would be making the wheels wider and adding more weight. Both of these strategies would help the car to not flip and to keep it straight on the course.

Conclusion