How can I make a pinewood derby car go faster?
As a former Cub Scout who has many fond memories of building pinewood derby cars with my father, here are some thoughts that may help. Let’s start with the basic fact that pinewood derby cars roll down a track under the influence of gravity. Ignore the track for a moment — let’s say I take two pinewood derby cars and I drop them in a vacuum. We have all seen (or heard of) the experiments where a feather and a heavy steel ball are dropped in a vacuum. And we know that the feather and the ball fall at the same speed. Therefore, if a pinewood derby race involved dropping two pinewood derby cars in a vacuum, it wouldn’t matter what the cars looked like, how much they weighed or anything else — every race would be a tie! Pinewood derby races are not held in a vacuum, however — they are held in air. We know that in air, a heavy steel ball falls much faster than a feather. So you want the car to be as heavy as possible. Here’s
