Collegiate Times

Members of the Virginia Tech Motorsports group participate in building a formula racing vehicle in the lab for a competition

The sign urges: Please don’t tap on the glass. The animals may be frightened.

Virginia Tech’s College of Science does not maintain a zoo on campus, so who hosts the creatures?

The Ware Lab is not truly home to monkeys or tigers, but rather engineering students with senses of humor.

Within a military building, next to the power plant at the intersection of Stanger and Barger Street, the Ware Lab is 10,000 square-feet of workspace for 19 undergraduate engineering design projects. Inside, a machine shop boasts a wall of windows, onto which students taped the wildlife warning.

“Everyone has, you know, their little jokes that go on to keep it kind of light, because you’re trying to get a lot of work done, but you don’t want to be stressed out,” said Stephen Riner, a senior mechanical engineering major.

The Ware Lab represents many of the 14 engineering concentrations, including civil, aerospace, ocean and electrical.

Riner is one of more than 20 students on the hybrid electric vehicle team, which is in the midst of a three-year competition sponsored by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy. The EcoCAR challenge prompts 17 university teams to reduce vehicle fuel use and emissions without sacrificing elements such as safety and consumer appeal.

Manipulating a GM-donated vehicle, Riner said the Tech team aims to submit an entry that achieves 100 miles per gallon. Using plug-in hybrid technology, the vehicle could travel 40 continuous miles on electricity from a household outlet. Located at the farthest end of the Ware Lab, the hybrid electric vehicle team cuts and grinds on the Chevrolet.

The building is a long, narrow rectangle with a central aisle. Along either side of the aisle are fenced bays dedicated to each project — except for the human-powered submarine team, whose messy fiberglass landed them a basement slot. The setup isn’t unlike zoo pens, though the cages are often open and the beasts run the show.

The bays vary slightly in size according to project demands. The Chevrolet car, for example, mandates a larger stretch than the autonomous aerial vehicle team, whose airborne product can occupy a desktop.

Ware Lab manager Dewey Spangler said the building had no such organization when the college of engineering acquired it in 1998.

“The space was pretty much empty,” he said, “but we couldn’t use it as empty space.”

More than 100 years old, the building was previously a laundry facility. Spangler said it had no closed-pipe system, and large floor ditches served as drainage for excess water. To support the projects — and meet updated legal codes — the building required significant renovations; however, the money to make it happen was not on hand.

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A version of this article appeared in the Mar 25 issue of the Collegiate Times.