© 2009 Arizona Board of Regents.
Northern Arizona University, South San Francisco Street, Flagstaff, Arizona 86011
The 1998 Human Powered Vehicle Competition held in May in Denver brought prestige and honor to several engineering majors.
The competition includes three seperate categories: Single, Tandem, and Practical. These categories are then scored according to three divisions, design, sprint, and road race.
NAU placed first in the Tandem Design and Road Race categories and second in the Tandem Sprint category. They came out 1st overall, beating out other schools such as Southern Polytec-SU, University of Arizona, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and University of California - Berkeley.
HPV is a year long project that allows student engineers to gain hands on experience designing tandem rider vehicles.
It begins in the early fall, and is not completed until the early spring. A team comprised of mechanical engineering majors begins work on the bike. They also must organize funding and sponsership necessary to participate in the spring competition.
"The competition gives practical experience in design, stress analysis, material science, fabrication, improvisation, communication skills, and budgeting, " said team member Justin Young. "It is also a great opportunity to meet other mechanical engineering students."
© 2009 Arizona Board of Regents.
Northern Arizona University, South San Francisco Street, Flagstaff, Arizona 86011