By Elizabeth Cook
ecook@salisburypost.com
If you’re considering trying to stretch your gasoline mileage with a water-to-gas gadget advertised on the Internet, you might want to consult Evan Rogers.
The 13-year-old Erwin Middle School student put a homemade water-to-gas generator on his dad’s car for several weeks and measured the results. According to his data, the car’s miles-per-gallon performance actually went down slightly.
For that research and the science project he built around it, Evan recently won awards at the state science fair, including first place in his division.
Two other Rowan-Salisbury students won recognition at the state science fair, which drew more than 200 students and was held in March at Meredith College:
– Daniel Engwall of Overton Elementary School won an honorable mention.
– Joshua Price of North Rowan High School won a special award from the U.S. Army.
Rowan-Salisbury has had students place in the state science fair regularly, but first-place awards are rare, says Patsy Wilson, science specialist and planetarium director for the school system.
Evan, son of Kendall and Lynn Gobble Rogers, wrote in his hypothesis that he expected the generator to increase the car’s miles per gallon. But results to the contrary did not totally surprise him.
Why not?
“The second law of thermodynamics,” the seventh-grader says matter-of-factly.
To put it simply, he says, energy is lost in any conversion.
His dad, who teaches science at Erwin, drove his 1997 Camry through 10 fill-ups without the generator first, with Evan tracking the mileage. The car went 1,828 miles on 74.16 gallons of gas ó 24.65 miles per gallon.
Then, in November, they attached the homemade water-to-gas generator to the Camry and repeated the experiment. Going through 10 tanks of gas, the car went 1,381.8 miles on 56.9 gallons of gas ó 24.28 miles per gallon.
Some manufacturers claim the generators can triple or double a car’s mileage, Evan says, but he and his dad don’t see how that could be.
Evan, who might like to be an engineer someday, says the toughest aspect of the entire project was going through interviews with judges.
Evan’s project ó “Water for Fuel: Does Your Gasoline Mileage Really Increase?” ó won three awards at the N.C. Science and Engineering Fair.
– First place in engineering/technology, junior division, from the science fair.
– Outstanding project award from the U.S. Navy/U.S. Marines.
– And he was nominated for the Discovery Education Young Scientist Challenge.
Evan has been this route before, with his third-grade science project winning at the local and regional levels. But that one didn’t win at the state level.
The difference this year, he and his father believe, is that he conducted an experiment related to a timely topic ó gasoline mileage.
So Evan has advice for others who aspire to state awards for their science projects. “Do something that has to do with modern times.”