Jan 24, 2017 08:29 AM EST By Amanda Foster, UniversityHerald Reporter

When SpaceX's co-founder, Elon Musk, sent out an open challenge to all university students and engineering teams to create the future of mass transportation, Carnegie Mellon University answered. With a team of 55 members pulling their heads together, SpaceX's Hyperloop competition at Hawthorne is going to witness Carnegie Mellon's prototype. This is no ordinary prototype, they developed a technology to accelerate and slow-down a pod without a power source.

All pods will be tested inside a 1.5 mile tube with speeds of up to 220 mph, as reported by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. They aim to reach speeds of 700 mph. Vishal Jain, the leader of the university research team, says they are using powerful commercial magnets. With these magnets, the vehicle can accelerate and brake using its energy. Which means that the pod does not need any power source.

The key to their pod is the use of the strongest commercially available magnets. The north poles of these magnets are facing in different directions and generates strong currents that pushes the pod to speed up. A different composition of these magnets also create a braking force.

Carnegie Mellon is one out of the thirty teams that are competing at Hyperloop this weekend but CMU is already qualified for Hyperloop II - the next round of competition next summer. The CMU team is made up of engineers, designers and business students, as reported by Carnegie Mellon.

After working on the pod for over a year, the team is proud to say that their pod design is unique because of the engine, the levitation and the magnets involved.The university team shares Musk's dream of making travel time shorter between point A and point B. They continue to work on different variables and proposals, especially when it comes to testing the pod in extreme conditions.

Learn more about the Carnegie Mellon team and their Hyperloop project below. Also, watch out for the pod competition on January 27-29, 2017.

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