Tuesday, March 2, 2010

"Sikat si Sikat"

Sikat, the country's second solar car was about to end its roadshow across the Philippines.

Sikat, a second generation Filipino product of a dedicated group of faculty and students from the Mechanical Engineering and the Electronics and Communications Engineering department of De La Salle University in Manila, in partnership with the Philippine Solar Car Society was about to end their National tour that aimed to raise awareness on solar energy, its potentials and teh possibilities it offers.

Morever, it seeks to challenge and inspire Filipinos in the field of Science and Technology.

"although the car is designed only for racing, but we want to encourage the youth to enhance their creativity and innovativeness," said Jonathan Go, a member of the Solar car team.

The tour started at the DLSU campus last January 12 and off it went to major cities in the country like Davao, Cagayan de Oro, and Cebu city.

Siang, the first Filipino Solar car to enter the World Solar Challenge in Australia garnered 12th place last October21 to 28, 2007 and Sikat is an improved version of Siang with better design features like new generation sun power cells and more maneuverable and aerodynamic design is set to compete the same competition this year.

it features solar cells provided by sunpower, a company that provides teh highest efficiency solar cells in the world.

it boasts its lightweight carbon fiber body which can only be found in the latest F1 car models.

The team expects a better ranking in the competition this year with Sikat lighter by 100kg. experts claimed that it can outrun Sinag with top speed capacity of 112kph.###


By: Shelemiah Rose Bolon
Bj3-1d