The Daily Iowan THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2018
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THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA COMMUNITY SINCE 1868
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Solar car casts some sunshine The UI chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers is recruiting members of all majors and interests to build the school’s first competition-ready solar car.
Behind Iowa City’s drag-king scene Members of I.C. Kings, Iowa City’s drag-king troupe, share the secrets to readying themselves for drag performances. The group initially formed in 2009 and now performs at Studio 13 on the last Thursday of every month.
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Textbooks going digital with ICON Direct The UI launched ICON Direct this fall, an online platform that gives students the option of buying digital textbooks and course materials at a lower cost than the printed versions. Approximately 160 courses are using the platform this fall; around 10,200 students are enrolled in those courses.
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Katie Goodale/The Daily Iowan
LEFT: Engineering student Sam McElwain (left) and senior Adam Wilkinson (right) work on their club’s solar car in the Chemistry Building on Tuesday. The Solar Car Team is building the UI’s first competition solar car, which the club will continue to work on throughout this year. TOP RIGHT: Eben Shelton (left) and senior Adam Wilkinson (right) work on the top of the car on Tuesday. The team is building the university’s first competition solar car, which the club will continue to work on throughout this year. BOTTOM RIGHT: UI senior Max Hammond shows a diagram of the solar car during the Solar Car meeting in the Seamans Center on Tuesday.
BY JOSIE FISCHELS
josie-fischels@uiowa.edu A team of mechanical-engineering students met Tuesday night to invite University of Iowa students of all majors to join in building the school’s first competition solar car. The UI chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers took on the Solar Car Challenge in 2017 and aims to complete the project in six months. The team has 30 active members, and those members would like to raise — potentially even
Hawks helping Hawks with physical disabilities Three UI students created a nonprofit called Students Care to help students with physical disabilities. They hope to expand the organization with additional staff and an Iowa State location to reach more clients.
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double — their numbers with participants of all interests to finish the project. “We felt it was a great project for mechanical engineers to work on, and it gave mechanical engineers a chance to work with electrical engineers, business majors, finance, and actually work with a more broad spectrum,” said Winston Wallingford, the president of the UI engineer-society chapter. At the meeting, UI electrical engineering student Shane Trautsch said the project is on schedule. Solar panels will be implemented soon, and the team seeks artists
for the car’s design. “We just ordered 600 solar cells from SunPower, the lead manufacturers in solar-cell technology right now,” he said. “We’re currently working with Assistant Professor Fatima Toor [on the solar car], and we’re really happy to have her on board.” The UI chapter received the solar-car frame and chassis from Iowa State University’s long-established PRISUM Solar Car Team to help jump-start the program last year. Although the chapter was unable to compete in the 2018 Amer-
NATIONAL POLITICS
Grassley upbeat on confirmation
ican Solar Challenge this past summer because the car was incomplete, the team has high hopes for the project’s future, according to the UI Mechanical and Industrial Engineering website. Chapter Vice President Sam McElwain said the UI team plans to build a solar car completely on its own by 2020 to compete in the challenge. Once completed, the team members plan to test-drive and showcase their current vehicle through Iowa’s 99 counties in SEE SOLAR CAR, 2A
Hawkeye Poll opens doors for students
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley addresses the document debate in Supreme Court nomination.
Approaching a midterm election, the Hawkeye Poll allows students to conduct a poll on state politics and policy.
Football prepares for Iowa State playmakers without film
BY EMILY WANGEN
BY CALEB MCCULLOUGH
A main focus for Iowa has been studying film from the 2017 Cy-Hawk matchup, but it has to prepare for two major parts of the ISU roster without seeing how they play.
Iowa Sen. and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley called Democrats’ complaints of missing documents a “distraction” in the fight to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s choice for Supreme Court justice. “The judge is so qualified and [the documents are] meant to be distractions because none of them are seeing anything wrong with his qualifications,” Grassley told reporters Wednesday. Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing began Tuesday following the Labor Day holiday, but calls to delay the hearing began in August. The committee’s ranking member, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called for the delay of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing on Aug. 22 because the Judiciary Committee Democrats only had access to a portion of Kavanaugh’s records. Just days before the hearings were set to begin, the Senate was informed documents would be withheld by the executive branch. The Trump administration announced it would withhold 100,000 pages of documents relating to Kavanaugh’s time in the George W. Bush White
Students have a unique opportunity this year to participate in Hawkeye Poll, a political-science class offered only in election years focused on the process of creating and interpreting political surveys. The class covers all the various aspects of making and analyzing a survey, and students get the hands-on experience of creating and conducting their own poll. “For this class, we try to teach students the conceptual skills and practical tools to interpret surveys,” class instructor Jielu Yao said. “What makes this class different is that we let students do the real stuff.” The Hawkeye Poll began in 2007 as an independent study for undergraduate students to help in faculty and graduate student research, political-science Professor Fred Boehmke said. It has been offered as a class in its current form every two years since 2012. The data from the poll have been published in national and international newspapers. According to the class’s website, it has been seen in Newsweek, Time, and the Washington Post. The data have even been published in a newspaper in Japan, Boehmke said. Over the years, the poll has focused on such different areas as county and federal politics, Boehmke said. This year questions will relate to state politics. In addition to general questions about policy, it will feature questions about the candidates for governor and the House of Representatives, among others. Boehmke said the data will also be used to make predictions about who might win the state elections in November. First, Yao said, the students will work on creating questions for the survey. For example, she said, they will parse phrasing questions correctly to avoid accidental bias.
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Field hockey has global athletes Numerous athletes have come from around the globe for the opportunity to get an education and wear the Tigerhawk in college competition.
Tune in for LIVE updates Watch for campus and city news, weather, and Hawkeye sports coverage every day at 8:30 a.m. at daily-iowan.com.
emily-wangen@uiowa.edu
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caleb-mccullough@uiowa.edu
Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, talks to reporters at the 8th Circuit Judicial Conference in Des Moines on Aug. 17. Grassley told reporters hearings for President Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, would begin Sept. 4.
Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS
Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh testifies at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
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