Thursday 19 July (Idaho time) dawned with clear skies, promising a good day to finish Stage 3 of the American Solar Challenge.
For the Cruiser (MOV) class, the “cactus” diagram below tells the story for Stages 1 and 2. For each car, the first coloured bar shows the number of person-kilometres (distance driven times the average number of people in the car). The second coloured bar shows the external energy input, which is the number of charges (including the pre-race charge) multiplied by the battery capacity. This bar points downward, because large values are bad. The third coloured bar, which is the final score, is the first bar divided by the second (all bars are scaled so that the highest value is 100%). The numbers are very similar to those for Stage 1 alone. Update: the numbers on the web site have changed, so this chart has been recalculated to match.
Although the American Solar Challenge is far from over, I’m getting a head start on my personal Gem Awards for the race. The “Media Excellence Gem” goes to App State for their regular Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and well-written blog posts.
And now that the tracker is working (except for the teams marked in grey), we can see that the cars are off and running. The first of them should reach stage end wihin minutes:
Scientific Gems 
Great job! Thanks