Pinewood Derby Results

 

The pinewood derby was held today. There were many cars competing in the race. There was also a lot of technology including electronic scoring and a computer that projected the results. Unfortunately, the technology was not the most reliable in the world. There were a couple of long breaks when the laptop with the results failed. Anyway, it was a pretty successful day for me. My car had several firsts and seconds in the heats in which it competed. The rankings are determined by average time to finish across all heats in which a car competes. My car managed to finish 5th overall. Not good enough for a trophy, but a nice outing nonetheless.

By the way, in the photo above, my car is the one on the left. It's got a green number 99 painted on it.

Pinewood Pregame

Saturday is Pinewood Derby day at Cub Scouts. My car is all built and painted. It just needs weights, wheels, and axles added. My inspiration for the car was a Hot Wheels car named "Little Red Roadster." LRR is a many time champion in gravity racing on the Hot Wheels circuit, so I figured this would also be an excellent pinewood design since pinewood cars are also gravity powered. One design modification I made was to replace the LRR design, which is gray with a stylized "S" on the sides, to a more traditional (and presumably faster) flame design on the sides of the vehicle.

Daddy is mostly concerned with the speed engineering elements of the design. He found a website with advice for maximizing speed. Here's one odd little tip--it turns out that sanding the axles is helpful. Since the axles are nails, there is some scoring on the side of each near the head, presumably to help them stay nailed to whatever it is they're nailed too. However, this scoring creates additional friction, so sanding it down produces more speed. Of course, we're also going with carefully applied graphite. We also learned that the optimal weight placement is just in front of the rear axles. Mommy bought a bunch of weights and a very precise scale, so we can hit the weight max exactly. Wish me luck!

Odyssey of the Mind

I'm participating in a program called "Odyssey of the Mind." It's sort of a creative thinking and problem solving contest. My team, which consists of kindergartners and first-graders had the task of thinking up something to do with getting people to eat healthy foods. Since I myself do not much like to eat healthy foods, this topic was a challenge. Anyway, we came up with a candy factory that makes healthy candies from things like veggies. Fortunately, for us, we only need to do a mock-up of this factory rather than create a fully functional factory.

We each worked on different aspects of the job in terms of the design. The part that I seized upon is one of the most important aspects of the business--sales. I figured that the factory would be pretty useless if we can't sell the product. So, for my part, I set up a sales table, and am creating a sales costume. When asked what was the most essential thing for a sales person, I quickly hit on something super important--a name tag. All salespeople have name tags, so naturally, this is key. Mom asked me what name I would put on the name tag.

Ax

I answered. There seemed to be no particular reason why I thought Ax would be a good name. Anyway, I'm really enjoying this class. I like coming up with creative solutions to problems, especially problems related to business.

Latrell Sprewell Situation

I experienced a Latrell Sprewell type situation today at recess. Latrell, if you'll recall, got into trouble for choking his basketball coach. Well, anyway, I was playing basketball with my "friend" when there was a dispute. My "friend" decided to "settle" the dispute by choking me, which landed him in the principal's office. I was unhurt but upset. Yeesh. I hate school.

My Virtual Life

One of my Christmas gifts was the Wii game Mario Kart. It's the best game ever. You race around as one of the various Mario characters (my fave is Yoshi) in a variety of vehicles. In addition to the usual pitfalls of racing, there are a variety of things you can pick up and fling at the other drivers including banana peels, turtle shells, and lightning bolts. I've managed to improve a lot and unlocked a whole bunch of new characters and courses while racing. I'm very proud of my driving skills. Mommy worries about what my REAL driving will be like since my favored approach is never to take my foot (thumb) off the accelerator.