ChemE Car Project at UC San Diego started in 2011 but 2015 was the first year when UCSD team managed to qualify for National Competition.
In April 2015, during regionals at Cal Poly, Pomona, UCSD Great Gassby Car came in 2nd during the first trial and came in 3rd place overall, which meant we qualified to go to NATIONALS in Salt Lake City.
After Regionals, we came back to San Diego filled with energy and hope to conquer the competition at Salt Lake City. We started with modifying the car in preparation for the competition. 
The biggest problem we had was with injecting the syringe with Citric Acid into the pressure tank such that chemicals do not spill out. We laser-cut a holder to keep the syringe in place to prevent future spills. We knew that to succeed in Nationals we have to be more precise with timing of the reaction. Therefore, almost every night we would run trials with different concentration of limiting reagent, Baking Soda to create an optimal graph of dependence between concentration and distance travelled. During one of the trials two weeks before the competition our car had an accident when loading the chemicals in: a part of the motor broke off. We had to buy a new motor for our car to run. That meant that all the data acquired with the old motor was now unapplicable. After ordering a new motor and assembling the car, we only had a few days before our departure to Salt-Lake City. We could only run 3 more trials!
In addition to the problem with a motor, the holder for the syringe stopped working again and the car was leaking. That was a disaster… However, we already came so far from Regionals and tickets for the Salt Lake City were already booked. On a Saturday morning, we boarded the airplane and head to a very cold Salt-Lake-City.
It was the first time for all of us to be in Salt Lake City. I have never been to Utah and it was interesting to see such a different state. During our first day we had some free time and we decided to go sightseeing. It was super fun and educational to explore a new place with a very different culture.
On the day of the competition we had a poster presentation to start with and then a competition itself. One hour before the start the distance was announced to be 25.3 metres and the load was announced to be 230 mL of water. That was not a great news for our team as with a new motor the furthest distance we were able to go was around 20 metres. In addition we were also assigned to be the last car to go, which meant we had a very little turn around time between our first run and second run which prevented us from cleaning the pressure tank thoroughly. As the competition began many cars got disqualified as they were not able to start or run to far. That was great news to us as we were able to finish in 18th place during the first run even though we only drove for 4 meters. The second run went much better for other cars, and much worse for us. Even though our car drove to around 15 meters, it started squirting our a mix of critic acid and baking soda in the middle of the run. Any exhaust of chemical is a clear violation of the ChemE Car rules and therefore sadly our second run was disqualified. We ended up coming in 24th place out of 34 cars participating.
Even though we didn’t do as well as we hoped we all greatly enjoyed the experience of participating in a national conference and competing against so many great teams from all over the country. I believe that now UC San Diego team is much better prepared to do great in ChemE car competition next year. 
Vera Smirnova 