While students are busy taking their finals, PrISUm, the solar car team, will be traveling to Indianapolis early on Monday for a nationwide cross country race against other universities.

The Formula Sun Grand Prix will be hosted this year at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where universities, the majority of them from the Midwest, will be competing.

“PrISUm is the only solar car team representing Iowa, we’re the only team so far that’s entered a brand new solar car in every cross country american solar competition and been able to qualify it,” said Evan Stumpges, next semester’s project director.

The student group has spent the entire year working on constructing Anthelion, the car they’ll be racing with for the competition.

PrISUm was founded in 1989, competing in their first race in 1990, as the group prepares themselves for their eleventh race, Stumpges anticipates this year’s competition.

“The winning team and the second place team from the last race which are University of Michigan and University of Minnesota, they will be at this event and they’re looking to be our toughest competition right now,” Stumpges said.

Electrical issues with Anthelion is what has the team concerned for the upcoming competition.

“A lot of the problems we’ve had were related to poor wiring of the car,” Stumpges said.

“In the past year, we’ve redone a good portion of the wiring in the car to make sure everything is sound and reliable.”

This year the group has re-designed more than half of the car’s electrical boards, hoping to avoid anymore eletrical problems.

If Anthelion prevails, the group speculates to finish in either third or fourth place, what would be a significant improvement from last year’s placing.

PrISUm has been striving for a solar car lighter in weight, less rolling resistance and better aerodynamics to improve the car’s speed and weight distribution.

“The race is designed to go through towns and stick to highways, so you really need a car that can run consistently at 55 mph,” said Joel Eakins, treasurer of PrISUm.

“Last car made went up to 70 mph, on a nice clear day, it can run between 35-40 mph, just off the solar rays.”

The competition will be a 3 day event, competitors will begin Tuesday with scrutineering, once officials are done looking over each university’s car, the competitors will have two hours to charge their cars before the race begins.

“Students will start of charging their solar cars for a couple of hours for the day, fill the battery pack enough for the highways and as they go through towns, they [can] drive slow enough to conserve energy,” Eakins said.

The race will run from 9 am to 6 pm, the winner of the race is the car that has driven the most laps around the track.

PrISUm will videotaping the race, as part of the college of engineering outreach program. They plan to blog daily updates about the race on their website for interested fans.

The following week after the race, the group plans to participate in an event called, Sun Run, as an outlet to educate younger audiences about solar power.

“The Sun Run that we will tour this year was actually a proposal that was put into an energy department,” said Emmanuel Agda, advisor for PrISUm. “The idea there is to educate local elementary schools, they will drive around the second week of May around Iowa.”

Once school gets out, PrISUm will be occupied with the design plans for next year’s solar car.