UCLA Chem-E Car Journal

Here's an update on our last week's meeting for the Spring 09 quarter! Please thank to Roda and Ryan for keep in track of our meetings !

Tuesday

"On tuesday, we continued to do more test runs with the iodine clock reaction. When we
tested the 1% starch solution with an older solution, we got a run time of about 1:10. It
was similar in time to the test runs that we did last week. After those trials, we tried
using fresh solutions with freshly made 1% starch held at constant temperature. We
noticed that the run times were much more faster. What was even more interesting is that
most of the runs had the exact same time which was about 55 seconds. "

- Roda

Thursday
"-Made a 1% starch solution by mixing 4% starch in 1:3 ratio with water
-Heated Starch to re clear up solution
-Ran iodine clock reaction in iodine clock aparatus
-Varied the amount of thiosulfate
-Only chilled H2O2 solution, giving us quicker times that previously
-Chilled Both solutions and got comparable times
-Cleaned out unused bottles, and threw out many chemicals to prepare for summer break"

-Ryan

So let's it everyone! I hopefully everyone will have a nice summer vacation and please do ENJOY the vacation =). Again I will keep everyone updated during the summer time.

-Luke

We're having our last two meetings for this quarter on:

Tuesday:  12pm to 2pm

   - Run Iodine Clock reactions with 1%w/v starch & all old solutions

AND

Thursday:  2pm to 4pm

   - Run Iodine Clock reactions with fresh 1%w/v starch solutions

Come and join us before we miss each other during the summer vacation !

-Luke

Here is what happened during our Tuesday's meeting, the credit goes to our co-secretary Roda =).

"This tuesday we mainly focused on testing the Iodine clock reaction. We had conducted
test runs to see how long the reaction would take place if we kept the starch solution at
constant temp. Most of the trials had a run time of about 1:10. We noticed that perhaps
the reaction was running slowly because the starch solution was too opaque, so we tried
to dilute the solution of starch so we could get a more clearer sample. We did find out
that the diluted solution of starch had no negative effects on the iodine reaction. More
work needs to be done on this issue to see if this reaction could move faster. Towards
the end we had made more batches of solutions for future use. "

We didn't have our usual meeting on Thursday because there was not lab that we can use during our usual time. Here are some other event updates: there will be an AIChE Annual BBQ on Saturday, May 30th. It's going to be at the Holmby Park from 11 AM to 2 PM. Awards will be pass out - students had a chance to select their favorite Chemical Engineering TA and Professor and all the other fun stuffs. So come and support AIChE's one of the last major event !

-Luke

Hi everyone!
 
Great news!  This weekend, we competed in the Western Regional Conference at UC Davis and we placed 2nd!  We will be heading to the National Conference in Nashville, Tennessee on November 6 - 9, 2009!  Hurray! =D
 
Our car: The car that we ran at the competition consisted of a recently purchased fuel cell to power our car and a iodine clock reaction to stop our car.  We will be sending out more emails about this quarter's activities and meeting times soon!
 
We also have new Chem-E-Car Co-Chairs: Erik and David!