Yankton P&D Article

The numerator was in the news today in Yankton's Daily Press & Dakotan. Check out the link below.

Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan

The Numerator 2.0 in the news

The Numerator has been getting some press coverage.

The Story from the Red Bull website

Sports Illustrated briekly covered the race in thier Oncampus section of SI.com

Brown Universities Brown Daily Herald has a great write up with some quotes from the pilot of The Numerator 2.0

The South Dakota School of Mines has a write up compiled by yours truely.

Providence Soapbox Champs

The Numerator 2.0 is the fastest calculator in the world!

The Good, The Bad, And The Nerdy now holds the title of 2007 Red Bull Champions! College Hill in Providence, Rhode Island claimed the life of many gravity-powered crafts. However, The Numerator 2.0 owned the course. Piloted by Anthony Johnson and Charlie Murray, The Numerator hit speeds over 30MPH on the course finishing 6 seconds faster then the field.

The Good, The Bad, And The Nerdy would like to thank everyone involved with the event. Many students helped out behind the scenes to made the numerator. Thanks to CAMP for the funding to transport the craft out to the smallest state in the union. Thanks to the Summit Signs and Supplies for the Decals and Mid Dakota Diesel for the building materials.

Keep Drinking RedBull and hopefully they will continue to hosts events like the Soapbox Race.

Stay tuned for more info!

She Rolls like a Charm

Wheels.......check
Brakes.......check
Seat.........check (kinda)

Well folks "The Numerator 2.0" is approaching race-readiness. We machined and welding the steering system earlier in the week and started testing. The brakes were installed this morning and after some tuning, The numerator took some speed checks behind school. She handles well and lives to fly. Enjoy the pictures.

Frame Construction

The frame is almost rolling. Thanks to some members of the Baja team, the frame is starting to take shape. All of the lower members were tig welded up in the CAT Lab last night. The front axles will be turned either this evening or tomorrow morning. The Numerator 2.0 should be rolling by Friday!

Update: The Frame

Yesterday was the beginning of frame construction. I bought the steel from Ace Steel and Recycling here in Rapid City. I used my trusty snowboard rack to carry the precious cargo back to the Lab. Craig Grunfelder and myself spend some quality time with the chop saw last night and got all the miter cuts made for the main frame members. I need to add a few more members into the solidworks model to stiffen the frame up a little bit. My solidworks model shows that the frame and wheels should weigh in at about 52lbs.

My Brother Rusty brought up a cool idea for the wheel covers. He thinks we should write Pi out to a bizzillion places on the wheel covers. Starting on the outer most ring by the rim and spiral the numbers to the center. I think it would look pretty sweet when The Numerator is cruising down the track.

Any thoughts?

The Foam-ula for success

The construction of the fiberglass shell for The Numerator 2.0 is moving alone quite well. We started with 7 sheets of Polystyrene foam and masterfully craved them using a new hot wire cutting tool. The packaging of this tool said it would cut through foam "like a hot knife through butter!" One we cut all of the individual pieces of foam, we glued them together and we had ourselves a mold.
We performed a wet lay-up over the foam with fiberglass mat and epoxy resin. Once all the shell is covered with the desired amount of fiberglass, we will break out the foam and dissolve the rest with Acetone. Thanks to Brett, Matt, John, and Brian for their help on the lay up. Here are some pictures of the fruits of our labor.