Grampa’s stories #16

 


Pinewood Derby


I think boys in Cub Scouts probably still do this, but when I was young we got to participate in a race called the pinewood derby. Boys and their fathers made cars from a little kit including a small wood block, nails, and four wheels. The goal was to make your car in such a way that it was the first one down a race track. Everybody participated. Some cars were fast. Some cars were colorful. But everybody had fun doing this. My older brothers participated when they were scouts, so I knew what I was getting into. A few weeks before the race, my dad and I went to work making the fastest pinewood derby car. 


I didn’t really know what I was doing, but my dad had some good ideas. The principle we tried to follow was to put all the weight in the very back of the car, so it fell the furthest and helped carry the car along the flat part of the track to win the race. Aerodynamics, minimal friction, and physics strategies were all top of mind for my dad. I just nodded my head and listened to his physics lessons as we assembled my car for victory. There were a lot of considerations: speed, momentum, lubrication, and distance all had to be addressed. Our strategy was to hollow out  the wood in the frontmost part of the car and put all the weight in the back, so it fell the greatest distance and carried the car swiftly along the flat part of the track. We spent time in our wood shop in the basement of our Salt Lake City house removing the wood in the front of the car. We left little narrow fins to retain its strength and put a lead block in back to build the car its precise weight for the race. It’s a great memory that I still cherish working together with my dad on my race car. As he explained physics principles and told me how great I was doing all through the process, I pretended to understand what he was talking about and nodded my head. 


Well, it worked. The leaders let 4-5 cars down the race track each heat. The winning car went to a winner’s bracket, and the others dropped out. Each time my car raced, it didn’t always make it down the hill first, but it would catch up on the long flat track. Just prior to the finish line, my car would eventually pass the others. 


We won first place. 

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