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Race Car Made With Veggies And Powered By Chocolate
IS4110 writes "A new racing car made with potatoes and carrots and powered with chocolate waste has been developed by the Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre of the University of Warwicks in the UK.
The university's vehicle, called WorldFirst F3 project, has a steering wheel made of curran, a material derived from carrots, that is expected to replace glass fiber and carbon fiber. It also has a racing seat made of SoyFoam, a soybean oil-based, flexible foam material. Wing mirrors incorporate materials derived from potato starch, a bib made from flax fiber, and lubricants based on plant oils."
Race called on account of rabbit attack.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
At the moment the carrot-based material "curran" used to make the steering wheel contains some carbon fibre. Fly-fishing rods made out of the material are 50% carbon fibre at the moment.
The inventors are working to increase the percentage of carrot based material
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
To playing with your food...
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
So, like, my XBox Funion Edition(TM) red ringed, so I ate it. I can't get it repaired now, but it was delicious.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
They just made a 200+ MPH Trabant!
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Nothing beats a potatoe.
What's the point of a project like this? I've seen plenty of stories in the form of "$TECHNOLOGICALLY_SOPHISTICATED_DEVICE made from $NATURAL_THING", and they're all useless gimmicks.
These guys used some natural materials to build a car. So fucking what? Either the natural materials require so much processing that they're practically "artificial" materials (like the Curran steering column), things we've known how to do for years (like building seats out of foam), or things that just destroy the utility of an object.
Furthermore, the production of these devices wouldn't be nearly as environmentally friendly if scaled up. How much fossil fuel would we expend growing the carrots for the steering columns, for example? I bet the carbon footprint wouldn't be much better than that of today's cars.
You want to help the environment? Work on real technology, not cheap dead-end gimmicks.
Actually TFA points out that they opted for carrots due to the supply of non-food grade carrots available to them. What I'm waiting on thought is for our genetic engineering capability to achieve the state of not re-purposing existing biologic materials, but rather custom designing organisms to produce (or be) materials or products.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Converting food into building material? Is this really a good idea?
Right now, corn is being converted into fuel, in a very inefficient manner, only affordable because of massive government subsidies (the pump prices held down by pulling money out of your wallet through taxes). Corn once was a cheap staple for poor people worldwide. Corn prices have gone up because of this ethanol, which means more starvation worldwide.
What will happen to other food prices if this keeps going on. How much will they subsidise the increased food prices, or are we going to have to start eating oil?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
That's the International Manufacturing Centre (not "Innovative", and doesn't have "Research" in its name), which is at the University of Warwick (not -s, which would be an abbreviation of Warwickshire).
'waste chocolate'? I'm afraid I don't understand :s
It also has a racing seat made of SoyFoam, a soybean oil-based, flexible foam material.
i've daydreamed about striking it rich with soybean based home insulation, mainly so i'd have an excuse to say "insoylation."
the united states is a nation of laws; badly written and randomly enforced -- frank zappa
Right now, corn is being converted into fuel, in a very inefficient manner, only affordable because of massive government subsidies
Corn and other farmers have been getting government subsidies for more than 100 years though.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
What if someone is allergic to one of the many vegetables made, and does not know it, they should include epipin in there for the driver, who knows....who knows...
Is there a special low carb sauce that can go with that to make it more appealing?