Our group, Ice Edge, consists of Way Lin (group leader), Isha (treasurer), Lu Ning (secretary) and Zheng Yi (safety officer). Considering the rapid development in the public transport system in Singapore, our group has come together to create a mode of transport that is ideally both cheap and resource-friendly. Our initial idea was to make use of readily available water and freeze it into ice. With the low friction between ice and metal, we hope to achieve some form of high-speed transportation of our ice on metallic tracks.

However, after many rounds of experiments and discussions, we discovered that the idea might not be as feasible as we initially assumed. Some problems we faced included the rapid grooving of ice, as well as the brittleness of the ice and its issue of breaking easily during experimentation. Hence, after some consideration, our group has changed our current focus to dry ice instead due to the similar ease of sliding it across surfaces.

By making use of the sublimation of dry ice at room temperature and the leidenfrost effect, we hope that the carbon dioxide produced would provide a cushion of air for our “dry ice vehicle”. In this sense, by incorporating a remote-controlled motor propeller system to provide forward and backward thrust, our group hopes to be able to build a dry ice hovercraft that is able to travel long distances with high speed.