The rest of the conversation about the Chem-E car
Me: “So where did you get the pulleys?”
Dean: “At a hobby store. They came with the gears.”
Me: “Where was the hobby store?”
Dean: “Washington [DC].”
Me: “What are they supposed to be for?”
Dean: “Just whatever people want to use them for. They know people will want them for projects, so they just sell them.”
Me: “How did you cut the teeth on the syringe plunger?”
Dean: “By hand.”
Me: “Like with a knife? You carved them?”
Dean: “I used a Dremel. It was very time-consuming.”
Me, laughing: “Well that’s what I was asking by how did you cut them — like did you use a Dremel, or what? I think when you’re building things you must be using a different part of your brain from the verbal part. Where did these little bars come from?”
Dean: “They came from the hobby store, too.”
Me: “Why is this front wheel on the side instead of the center? For stability?”
Dean: “I needed it to stay in place so I put it against the side.”
Me: “And it doesn’t affect how it runs?”
Dean: “Right.” Pause. “You’re very inquisitive.”
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(A “Chem-E” car is a car that’s powered by a chemical reaction; there’s a contest in which university students compete to build the best one, and Dean is chaperoning BYU’s team for that contest this weekend. But Dean also wanted his freshmen to have the experience of building a scaled-down version as a class assignment, so the car he just built is a sample of the kind of thing they’ll have to build. This one is powered by Alka-Seltzer in a large (needle-less) syringe; when you add the water to the Alka-Seltzer, the plunger of the syringe is pushed outward, and teeth on it turn gears that turn the wheels of the car. I didn’t get to see it in action because Dean says the teeth on the syringe plunger are stripping off already, so the car is only good for a couple of runs (and he’s going to show it to his students today.) He says at some point he’ll get video of it, and I assume he’ll put it on his website, so I’ll post a link when that happens.)
