From Thomas and Back

First off, I'd like to apologize to my group members and Ms Watkins for missing the deadline.

The first part of our Engineering 198 Lab had me in a group trying to design a steam powered car. Simply put, the car failed to work. This was primarily because the flames from the fuel container melted the solder keeping the nozzle attached to the boiler.

Without fully considering the implications we as a group decided to paint the car. The paint ignited and the flames grew large enough to melt the solder, a heat shield could have prevented this from happening. [Claim]. Since there was water in the boiler at the time, temperature inside the boiler (and hence the boiler itself) could not have reached temperatures above 100 degrees Celsius [Grounds] because of the principal of latent heat of vaporization [Warrant]. This is proved since the solder never melted in any of the multiple tests that were run prior to demo day (before painting the car) [Backing].Though the possibility exists that the prior tests weakened the integrity of the solder, and that the solder melting was coincidental with the painting of the car [Rebuttal]. This is however, improbable. If a heat shield were installed to prevent the flames from directly touching the soldering joint, the solder should have remained solid, the nozzle should not have shifted from its optimum position and the char should have run perfectly well.[Qualifier]