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