OAK RIDGE TEACHER TO JUDGE SUNRAYCE

OAK RIDGE -- Wayne Bock will spend two weeks this summer in the sun, but he'll be watching cars catching sun rays rather than working on a tan.

The Oak Ridge industrial technology teacher will be an official observer in the 1997 Sunrayce, a biennial intercollegiate competition of solar-powered cars.

"I'd usually be fixing up my house in the summer, and had actually already got started, but this was a lot better," said Bock, who will be one of about 30 observers monitoring the competition.

More than 24 college and university teams have qualified for the fourth biennial cross-country race. Two University of Missouri campuses -- Columbia and Rolla -- had teams qualify.

The race is scheduled to begin June 19 at the Indianapolis Speedway and will run for two weeks, ending on June 28 at Colorado Springs, Colo. The competition is sponsored by General Motors, Electronic Data Systems and the U.S. Department of Energy. The team with the lowest cumulative time to Colorado Springs wins the event.

Bryan Arnold, Sunrayce 1997 coordinator, said in a telephone interview that Bock will work with other teachers and students who want to broaden their knowledge of solar energy and solar-powered technology.

"Our observers are all volunteers; many of them are science teachers," said Arnold of Detroit. "We hold workshops to give them insight into solar energy. Each observer rides with competing teams for one day and records all of the important things that are going on and that no laws are being broken. They switch off each day so they aren't riding with the same team each day."

Bock became interested in the Sunrayce after chatting with other teachers on the Internet. Someone mentioned the race and listed a World Wide Web site that would give more information, he said, so he visited the site and put in an application to be an observer.

"It's a pretty exciting way to spend the summer," he said. "As a teacher, I hope to bring back some practical applications for solar energy for my students."

Bock will ride with teams along a planned route that runs mainly through U.S. highways 50 and 54. Drivers will run their student-designed vehicles from dawn to dusk each day for a distance of 1,230 miles. Sunlight, or solar radiation, is the only power source allowed to fuel each car.

"The cars are very small; basically, they're one-seaters," Bock said. "The drivers are surrounded in these little cars by solar energy cells; the traffic on I-70 would blow those things away. There's a lot less traffic on highways 50 and 54, so that's why we're running on those roads."

The best average speed recorded in this competition was 37.23 miles per hour, which was recorded in the Sunrayce 1995. The Sunrayce mission is to promote hands-on engineering, education, energy awareness and the advancement of new technologies.