Science Project Abstract

My last year in Cub Scouts, my pinewood derby car took first place in the Pack and District, and third in the Council races.  I wanted to find out how to make the fastest car.  We’ve heard lots of tips and theories, but didn’t know which actually made the cars go faster.  I decided to test each tip to see what effect they had on the cars. 

To do this I needed a track with a timer so I could measure the speed of the cars.  My dad built a track with a lane timer for the tests. 

We ran each test at least five times and took out the high and low times before averaging.  My dad made a chart on the computer with spaces for me to write in the times for all the tests I was going to run.  We started by timing three cars together with no modifications.  Then we made changes to the cars and tested each change to find the difference.  After I ran the tests, we put the times into the computer to average and graph the results. 

My dad helped me build two cars using the tricks we tested.  We raced them against my fastest Cub Scout car.  One of the new cars was faster and the other was a little slower than my old car. 

Next I’d like to try to find out why one of the new cars is faster than the other and I’d like to test more tips we’ve found on the Internet.

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