Meet the 8th Grader Who Created a More Eco-Friendly Version of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop

Caroline Crouchley, an 8th grader from Long Island, has created an improved version of Elon Musk’s hyperloop. The 13-year old won second place at the 2019 3M Young Scientist Challenge.

Her design is easier to build, safer and cheaper than other hyperloop designs, including Elon Musk‘s $6 billion dollar California plan to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. Crouchley told Fast Company, “It has a simpler design, can be more easily constructed, can utilize the existing footprint of rail right of ways, and is cheaper to build.”

The idea of a hyperloop didn’t start with Musk, but he is famous for discussing and refining it. The “hyperloop” idea is ultra high speed transit of 700 miles per hour. In the scheme, self-propelled transportation pods move through vacuum tubes at the high speeds. The idea is to move people between long-distance areas much faster.

Crouchley’s idea puts a vacuum tube next to existing trains, which uses existing infrastructure and keeps trains in the same place. The train is connected to the tube with magnets, which moves it forward.

There are multiple environmental benefits to Crouchley’s project. Her idea runs on renewable electricity. The vacuum tube replaces the need for diesel engines or electric motors in trains, reducing trains’ fossil fuel emissions. Because her idea builds on existing infrastructure, instead of creating something new like Musk’s idea, it also avoids emissions and byproducts of new construction.

She says of the environmental benefit of the idea, “We are choking our cities with air Pollution from trucks and cars. We must move in the direction of workable mass transit, and right now, trains are the most ecological way of moving people and things from point A to point B.”

Here’s Crouchley’s video describing her project

Read more One Green Planet news about young scientists, including Irish Teen Wins Science Fair For Removing Microplastics from Water!

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