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FLL Project presentation By The Whatchamacallits: Peter, Aidan, Micah, and Jacob
• California• Bay Area• Palo Alto
Palo Alto
• Cars• Planes• Trains• Skateboards• Ambulances• Feet• Bikes• Boats• Helicopters• Motorcycles
• Caltrains• BART Trains• Amtrak• Light Rail
• Local Travel works well, has a few problems:• Safety• Pollution
• Long distance travel:o Too many stops=too slowo Old tracks=slow o Only one trip each day from Northern CA to
Southern CAo Not enough passengers, because of this!
Example Trip:
Palo Alto to Anaheim
CAR HIGH-SPEED TRAIN
SAVED
CO2 emissions 416 lbs. 82 lbs. 334 lbs.
Cost $88 $56 $32
Time 8 hours 2.5 hours 5.5 hours
• It is very fasto It goes from San Francisco to Los Angeles In 2 ½ Hours.
• Eco Friendlyo Does not use gasolineo Electrico Very efficient
• SAFE!o No grade crossings
• Comfortable• Convenience
o No Security checkpoints?o Stations Downtowno More Stations
• Loud• Ugly tracks• Ugly Wires• Divides neighborhoods• Expensive• Location of stations
One Solution: One solution to the problems with noise and looks is to
create an underground tunnel This will not divide neighborhoods, and won’t be ugly.
We went to the high-speed rail workshop and found out that the cost of creating a tunnel was around $200-300 million per mile. This is too expensive, so we had to think of a new idea.
Us with Joseph Bellomo, an architect who also had the raised- track idea.
• An elevated track with pillars to hold it up.o Allows foot traffic and cars to travel
underneath it.o Can be designed attractivelyo Other communities have done this sort
of project.
A light rail from the Seattle Tacoma airport.
We created a model of our raised-rail idea in Google Sketchup.
Transparent sound baffles
Our Model placed in Palo Alto
The Second Part of the Problem
• The next part of the problem is, what will they do for the power source.
• There is...o Catenary wires, the wires that are above the train, which
are ugly.o A third rail, which is very dangerous.o Gasoline, which is bad for the environment.o Electricity which is very cheap but hard to get to the train.o A fuel cell, which is extremely efficient but is very
expensive. • Out of all of these the fuel cell is the best choice... except
for the cost.
Here are some examples of ugly catenary wires
Our solution to that problem
• Make the High speed train powered by Fuel cell, it only emits nitrogen and water.o No more Wireso Eco-Friendlyo it is not ugly in any way.o Although, it costs just a bit more.
One fuel cell locomotive concept running on liquid ammonia
• We Put it on our team website: www.whatchamacallits.org • On November 8, we had a meeting with Palo
Alto City Council Member Mrs. Yoriko Kishimoto
• She is a Board Member of Valley Transportation Authority
THANK YOU!
The Whatchamacallits
…any questions?
Biblography www.carbonify.com http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail http://www.energy.iastate.edu/Renewable/ammonia/
ammonia/2006/VehicleProjects.pdf http://www.trainnet.org/Libraries/Lib019/EUROSTAR.JPG
Our Robot for FLL