Penn State's Chem-E-Car team, part of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) student chapter, placed first out of 21 schools in the Chem-E-Car Performance Competition at the 2026 AIChE Mid-Atlantic Conference. This recognition qualifies the team for the 2026 Annual Student Conference, an international competition that will take place in November. Last year, Penn State's Chem-E-Car team took fourth place in the global competition.
"From the time I joined to now, we have all learned a lot, worked hard and made many improvements to our approach to developing each car," said Meilisa Thomas, a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in chemical engineering and the club's president. "I see these recent successes as an indication that we're heading in the right direction."
Chem-E-Car competitions engage college students in designing and constructing a small model car powered by a chemical energy source, according to the AIChE website. Students work in teams to design system components including batteries, pressure vessels, combustion engines and stopping mechanisms. One hour before the competition starts, the teams are given a required distance between roughly 50 feet to 100 feet, which the car must travel safely and precisely.
This year's regional conference was hosted by Virginia Commonwealth University from March 28-29. The winning car, Penn State's Foam Sweet Foam, is powered by a lead acid battery, according to Thomas. To stop the engine, the team blocked a laser in the onboard computer system with a carefully controlled elephant toothpaste reaction, which rapidly breaks down hydrogen peroxide with potassium iodide and traps the resulting oxygen gas in bubbles of liquid soap.
Foam Sweet Foam was almost exclusively constructed from 3D printed parts, and its look was inspired by the flying house from Disney and Pixar's "Up."
