Today at Brown

The whine of electric drills piercing cucumbers and avid discussions of eggplants’ inertia were among the sounds heard Friday, October 30, on Manning Walk during Brown’s second annual Edible Car Contest. The event was sponsored by the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and the Division of Engineering.

Team V-Ate’s Alexis Mancini ’10 and Kathryn Schwink '10 work on their design. Twenty teams consisting of undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and even a television host worked feverishly during the afternoon’s allotted two hours carving carrots and attaching rice-cake wheels to fettuccini axles. This year’s event caught the attention of the Food Network’s Glutton for Punishment crew. The show’s host, Bob Blumer, competed on Team Vegi-Might.

“Bob took the competition very seriously,” said Lauren Brennan, manager of communications for the engineering division. She added that, with assistance from Assistant Professor of Engineering Kelly Pennell and Dean Rod Clifton, Blumer learned a lot about engineering from the car-construction challenge.

At the beginning of the two-hour competition, organizers set out an array of food on a table in Barus and Holley: pumpkins, squash, carrots, apples, celery, candies, and more. “Go!” shouted event coordinator Holly Lauridsen ’11 over a megaphone, setting off a mad dash for design ingredients. “It was like flood gates had opened and there was absolutely no empty space [at the table],” Lauridsen said. “It was an amazing scene.”

While it may have appeared chaotic, the competition followed strict rules. Each car had to have at least three working wheels as it rolled down a ramp. Judged on both aesthetics and total distance traveled, the vehicle had to remain completely edible, with contestants using only the foods provided. Several teams melted caramels – grabbed from among the candy on the materials table – to fuse pieces together.

Team Vegi-Might included Food Network star Bob Blumer (right). Bob Blumer’s team built and tested several prototype models prior to the competition, even consulting a professional carver. Senior group Get Squashed! didn’t make any models in advance, but its members had a design in mind. “There were a lot of thought experiments involved,” Al Urim ’10 explained.

Contestants await the results of judging. The edible car created by winning team Pumpkin Express rolled an amazing 174 feet, narrowly avoiding a collision with a RIPTA bus on Brook Street. Vegi-Might came in third. Blumer’s coverage of the competition will be featured this coming spring on Glutton for Punishment.

“I love doing these events,” Lauridsen said afterward. “They provide engineering students with an opportunity not only to become a better community, but also to show the rest of the campus a little of what we do.”