Anthony Acres High schoolers get hands-on building an e-kart

MONDOVI, Wis. (WEAU) -The race is on for a team of five Anthony Acres high school students getting hands-on experience by competing against other schools to build the best e-kart.

If you walk into the greenhouse next to Anthony Acres Charter School in Mondovi you won’t see many plants, but you may come across high school students working away on an e-kart. For a couple of months, students have been working with a staff advisor on what has been dubbed the ‘E-kart Project’. Chippewa Valley Technical College reached out to Anthony Acres to have students convert a four-person gas go-kart to a fully electric one. About a year and a half ago CVTC received a grant from the National Science Foundation to bring more project-based learning into the classrooms and STEM skills using electric vehicles.

The students meet every Wednesday for two hours. The first hour they spend researching the mechanics of the project then they get hands-on.

“Now we’re in the process of getting all the information to get the actual electric motor and get that here,” E-kart Project Advisor Ben Magnus said. “So, we can start dismantling the gas part and putting the electric components into the go-kart.”

Although they are busy figuring out how to build an e-kart, they are also busy preparing for a race.

“We are going to compete with two other local schools who’re doing the same project,” Magnus said “Basically we are going to see who built the best go-kart on an on-road and off-road track. We’ll have a little ceremony and maybe a trophy or something.”

Magnus said they will be competing against Agusta and Osseo-Fairchild in June, the other two schools that received grant money from CVTC for the project.

Although the race will bring out the team’s competitive side, 10th grader Alex Brockman said for him the project has been about gaining new skills.

“It’s been a lot of help for at least me I know,” Brockman said. “Knowing that I know absolutely nothing and a lot of other people are experienced with this type of thing and have worked on trucks and cars.”