YSU students engineer edible cars

By DENISE DICK

denise_dick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

A meal of bread and pasta may leave you feeling weighed down, but the ingredients didn’t slow the Gluten Super Car.

Corey McVicker of Leavittsburg, an electrical engineering major, and Mathew Conti of Boardman, a chemical engineering major, both students at Youngstown State University, used a hoagie bun, rigatoni and bagels to create an edible car.

It’s a project in Kerry L. Meyers’ first-year engineering class at YSU.

Each car had to meet certain criteria. It had to be made of all edible parts, roll — not slide — down a 25-degree ramp and continue rolling for at least 12 inches across the floor. It had to complete that run at least twice.

“This is the fun, creative part of the project,” said Meyers, director of YSU’s first-year engineering program.

For the next part, students have to gather data, determine why their cars did or didn’t work and develop a report and a presentation explaining it.

The Gluten Super Car continued for about 40 inches

beyond the bottom of the ramp, across the floor of the Moser Hall lobby Thursday morning on its first run. The second time down the ramp was even better: 78 inches across the floor.

The aspiring engineers used the bun for the car’s body, dry rigatoni noodles pieced together for the axles and bagels for the wheels.

They tried other options first, including cheese. But at $5 for a cheese wheel it proved too costly, McVicker explained.

Rana Abuhashin of Youngstown, a chemical engineering student, and her teammates, Marlena Kimple of Girard, who’s studying industrial engineering, and Tyler Smith of Campbell, a mechanical engineering major, developed the Cookie Car.

It, too, zipped down the ramp and exceeded the distance required at the ramp’s bottom.

A hoagie bun provided the body.

“It’s light,” Abuhashin explained.

They used pretzel rods as axles with two Fudge Stripe cookies stuck together for each wheel and Gummy Lifesavers to keep the wheels in place.

Other car parts included bananas, marshmallows, sweet potatoes, potato slices, corn-on-the cob, pizza slices, rice cakes, carrots and gumdrops.

There was a lemon or two in the bunch, those that fell apart on their way down the ramp. Most, though, fulfilled the requirements.

This marks the third year Meyers has assigned the project to her students, and each year they come up with something new.

“There are an infinite number of possibilities that are very viable,” she said.