It's light, it's dangerous and it turns heads wherever it goes. McGill's student-built solar car is sleek and shiny and can hit a top speed of 120 km (75 miles) per hour. Not exactly Formula One velocity, but considering it runs on about the same amount of power as a hairdryer, it's pretty impressive.

The students who make up McGill's Team iSun traveled to the Conference on Urban Transport in St. Jerome, Quebec, last fall to show off their baby. The solar car was by far the most popular exhibit in the hockey rink-cum-showroom and the team was eventually forced to erect pylons around the car to keep grubby paws off its delicate solar cells -- worth about $30,000.

"We get the same questions again and again: 'How do you get in?' 'How fast does it go?' 'Can it run at night?'" says weary student Elie Sarraf, who gets almost as much attention from the locals for his fiberglass leg cast (soccer accident) as the car.

	Back row left to right: Len D'Cuhna, Nicolas Verzeni and Mathieu Roberge. Front row: Émilie Fortier and Phillip Weicker. Photo: Owen Egan

The car's outer shell, which is coated with 452 solar cells, is shaped like a giant curved rectangle with a jet-fighter cockpit dome in the centre, and sits on the bottom chassis in which the driver lies almost prone. There's no air conditioning under the greenhouse-like canopy -- there isn't even a headrest.

When the sun's rays strike the photovoltaic (solar cell) panels, which are made from silicon crystal, they tap into the potential energy between layers of positive and negative materials. That energy flows into electrodes and charges iSun's electrical systems.

"We'd like to have more of these kinds of projects," said mechanical engineering associate professor Peter Radziszewski, who has served as the team's faculty advisor since 2001.

"These multidisciplinary projects allow students to develop people skills by working with team members and sponsors beyond what is offered in the engineering faculty."

Radziszewski pointed out that when these students enter the work force they will need to do exactly what they are doing now to make the car work -- mechanical engineers collaborating with electrical engineers to make a better product.

Although the car itself is an engineering marvel in many ways -- it is the lightest solar car in the world -- it is the people who make it possible.

The team wants to enter the American Solar Challenge that occurs in July. Dozens of solar powered cars in various classes will travel from Chicago to California. Bigger still is the World Solar Challenge in October. The top teams in the world will cross 3,000 km. of Australia's desolate interior, from Darwin to Adelaide. Smith said that the team expects to do well in both races -- he predicts top-ten finishes in both.

Although the team is happy to take on anyone who wants to help out, the vast majority of the students who make up the team are in engineering. And true to their calling, most want to tinker with the car in some way. But the team is so much more than that.

McGill team mechanics at work.

Emilie Fortier became friends with many of the iSun members last year, and hitched along on a meet-and-greet with sponsors in Toronto over the summer. Since then, she has become the de facto human resources and public relations manager. Her job is to get the car to events like the one in St. Jerome and the Montreal auto show. She also arranged to have presenters at McGill's open house in February.

The benefits of these events are many, says Fortier. "We get lots of media visibility, and sponsoring companies are happy to see that. Plus we can go to other companies and tell them 'Look, you could have been there.'"

It helps with recruitment, too. "It builds a sense of team spirit ‹- if you see yourself on television, you're going to be more motivated."

As one of the few women involved, Fortier occupies a special place on the team. She concedes she does sometimes get razzed by her fellows, but in some respects is listened to more. And one upcoming initiative of hers may help balance the testosterone in future years.

"We're doing some visits to local high schools, and one of them is an all-girls school. I have a contact there who said it would be good for us to come to motivate them," she says, adding with a laugh, "I still don't know what I'm going to tell them!"

Will Sacks is the iSun's "rainmaker." He acts as the chief fundraiser. To run the car for a racing season -- paying for parts, maintenance, testing, travel, shipping, and the myriad of other costs requires a budget of roughly $270,000. Much of that is offset by "in-kind" donations of materials and facilities, but cash flow remains a challenge.

There is an art to getting people to give you stuff, and as a mechanical engineering student, Sacks had little idea what he was getting into.

"In the beginning I was calling anyone -- even people who made pipes," he said.

His pitch has refined a lot over the past year. He focuses on companies, foundations and individuals that stand to benefit from an association with Team iSun. The team's single biggest sponsor is ICP (Innovative Consumer Products) who donated the solar cells that make the car go. In return for their largesse, the company occasionally uses the car for promotional purposes. Other major sponsors are Bombardier and the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation.

It isn't every school organization that will get you into the boardrooms of Bombardier, but Sacks has developed pretty good instincts: "You call people up and tell them 'We're from McGill and we have a solar powered racing car,' and they'll say 'Really? How fast does it go?' and then you know they're going to give you something," he says with a grin.

In the end, despite the human resources and financial issues, the car is an engineering project. Phil Weicker, currently pursuing his master's in electrical engineering, is in charge of the car's electrical systems. He explains that although certain components come off the shelf, others are built up from scratch by the team, such as the iSun battery pack.

The panels charged by the sun.

"We designed the circuit boards, the enclosure, the high voltage system. You have the motor, the solar array, and the battery pack. You have to be able to shut it all off if something goes wrong; you need to monitor the voltage and temperature of the batteries; you need to know current going in, current going out; and ideally you want to have all of this with as little input from the driver as possible," he said.

The McGill system is far more sophisticated than many other cars in the solar car racing circuit, according to Weicker.

"I think a lot of people underestimate how dangerous these can be -- especially with lithium ion battery chemistry, which stores a tremendous amount of energy, but which, if you mishandle it, lets it all out at once. Basically, you have a bomb," he says, adding that their unit proved its worth when it shut down the car when a fire broke out on board.

"Ours sets the example of where the bar should be."