FORT WORTH (WBAP/ KLIF) — Hundreds of high school students got the chance to be in the driver’s seat Tuesday when they kicked off this year’s Solar Car Challenge.
The competition is a 1500 mile trek from Texas Motor Speedway to Palmdale, California, in solar cars the students built themselves.
Dr. Lehman Marks started the competition in 1995 with just a handful of students. Now there are thirty teams participating.
Dr. Marks says the students get to achieve a goal while learning about math and science. “They don’t give up,” Dr. Marks said in an interview with WFAA-TV. “They’ve got that tenacity to be able to stick through this.”
Organizers say that ultimately the course is nearly impossible to finish. But they say STEM programs are the real winners.
The 2018 Solar Car Challenge won the NBCUniversal Foundadtion’s “Project Innovation Grant.”
It’s also been named one of “Technology & Learning Magazine’s” Top 10 Most Innovative Education Programs.
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Robyn Geske, KLIF/WBAP, Copyright © 2018
