Boat Races!!!

Man oh man was this a stressful, yet fun, project! My partner and I had to design a boat that would float, not turn into a flaming ball of fire, and be light enough for our putt-putt engine to push it across the gutter using our biodiesel and a candle wick as the fuel. I'm glad my partner was in engineering because I wouldn't know where to start! He came up with a good design to use a milk carton as a boat. We made tons of modifications to the boat the first day of testing but our engine kind of let us down. 2 days later the day of the race we had a different boat that was a little shorter with the engine lower. Our little boat made it across at record time of 55 seconds! Our boat may have been the slowest in our class but in my heart it was the fastest! Slow and steady wins the race! It was cool that we used actual fuel to burn the candle wick to make our boat go. It was a fun project with some stress added to it because getting it across the gutter was a trouble the first day of testing our boat. But we made it!

Here's our cute little boat!

Making of Biodiesel in the lab!

The morning of the making biodiesel was a very stinky morning! I brought a change of shirt so I wouldn't smell so bad later on in the day from the restaurant oil, but I could still smell the oil throughout the day! I thought it was really cool that we could make our own biodiesel. What's so cool about it is that it only look about 50mins to make honestly. 50mins is all it takes to save the environment. It's quick and easy. Plus imagine all the excess oil from all the restaurants! We can reuse it for fuel! This project really turned me into a huge tree huger to be honest. Yes it was a stinky lab but it was really cool to make something that a car could run on! I think it's super cool! The oil kinda looked like syrup and it was really gross but cool at the same time! What freaked me out though was that the second ingredient (that I forgot the name of...maybe glycerin??) could eat your flesh if it stayed on there longer enough. But hey everyone survived the lab!

Here are some pictures below of our biodiesel!

Making of Biodiesel commercial

I had no clue what biodiesel was at the beginning of this project. But after some research for our commerical project, I really think everyone should use it. It's home grown so we don't have to keep going to foreign countries to get our oil. It's also a renewable source! It decreases green house gasses by 86%! Imagine what the environment would be like if we all switched to biodiesel. The Earth would certainly look healthier and greener! This making of the video really opened my eyes to how badly we treat the environment. I loved this project and I really wish we could do another thing like this but sadly the end of the year is coming to an end. I can't wait to see what next years chemistry students will come up with!

Here's our video below!
Biodiesel: Make the Environment Great Again!

Here are some other video's from our class and from other schools that I thought were really good!
The Misconceptions of Biodiesel
Tom the Trucker Uses Biodiesel
Chem Biodiesel Project
BioCat vs Fossil FuelHog
Biodiesel: The Key To A Sustainable Future
What is Biodiesel?
Biodiesel: Fuel for All!