UMass Magazine Online

Fall 2004

Departments

Around the Pond

Features

The Future's So Bright

The Prince of Pages

The Changing Face of Beauty

Campaigns: Good for What Ails Us?

Around the Pond

Road Trip

IT'S PART LAWNMOWER, PART BICYCLE, and it’s housed in a fiberglass shell held together in places by Velcro. The speedometer maxes out at 15 miles per hour and the vehicle carries only one passenger, of small stature at that. Though not the most comfortable set of wheels around, UMass Amherst’s supermileage car came in fifth among 23 North American universities and colleges in the Society of Automotive Engineers’ annual competition in June. It achieved 819 m.p.g., averaging slightly over 15 miles per hour. The roadster developed by the UMass team is a prototype fresh off the drawing board—we won’t be driving 800 mpg autos in the next year or two, but, says team advisor David Schmidt, professor of fluid dynamics, “the idea of 500 miles per gallon is within the realm of possibility in my lifetime … it just won’t be in a family-size vehicle.”

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Counting Sheep

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Road Trip

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Kudos

Inspiring Achievements

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Basic Black

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A Minute With: Patty Freedson

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Last Words

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United We Stand

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The Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series

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