Above is a picture of some of the cars in Pete's group. Pete's is #4, the blue one. It is actually a wedge shape, which is hard to see from this angle. Ours was one of the few cars to have a driver. This is because most people are obsessed with eliminating sources of drag, but our goal for our first time was more about having fun than trying to win first place. After cutting the wedge piece off of the original block, we gave that to Sam for his "car", and he decorated it and put a little driver on it. The green car shown is the one that finished first in the group. The gold one finished third. Pete finished fifth. (There were 13 cars in Pete's group.)
They did a lot of races, to make sure there were fair results. Pete's car raced six times, once in each lane against a variety of other cars. Despite this variability, he was remarkably consistent - finishing third in each of the six races. Below is a picture of the track. You can see Pete's name on the board, and his car ready to go in lane 6.
Here is Pete watching his race. You can also see the finish line. It was all computerized, so things went much more smoothly than the Space Derby. It still took about 2.5 hours to run all of the races.
Sam and mom came for a little while too. After a few races, Sam was ready to go to the gym next door to watch the basketball game.
This was a fun event for us. One thing we learned is not to spend too much time slaving over the car production. We spent a total of about about 2-3 hours on the car over about a week. The most important thing for next year is to make sure we have a good scale, and work on getting the weight exactly 5.0 ounces before going to the official weigh-in.
They did a lot of races, to make sure there were fair results. Pete's car raced six times, once in each lane against a variety of other cars. Despite this variability, he was remarkably consistent - finishing third in each of the six races. Below is a picture of the track. You can see Pete's name on the board, and his car ready to go in lane 6.
Here is Pete watching his race. You can also see the finish line. It was all computerized, so things went much more smoothly than the Space Derby. It still took about 2.5 hours to run all of the races.
Sam and mom came for a little while too. After a few races, Sam was ready to go to the gym next door to watch the basketball game.
This was a fun event for us. One thing we learned is not to spend too much time slaving over the car production. We spent a total of about about 2-3 hours on the car over about a week. The most important thing for next year is to make sure we have a good scale, and work on getting the weight exactly 5.0 ounces before going to the official weigh-in.
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