This past week was the Pinewood Derby for our local Scouts! Win or lose making a car to race is a ton of fun and a good opportunity to spend some time together.
Mike decided he wanted the car to look like a Lamborghini Aventador. We cut out the shape with a band saw and then sanded it down.
Mike hand sanded the car body, we sealed it and then added weights in the rear of the car.
Mike painted the car orange and then we added details by hand with acrylic paints.
We polished the axles and wheels and added graphite everywhere we could think of. Here’s the finished car- it turned out to be more like a graphite-covered monsterghini (sort of reptilian) but it was still pretty slick.
We checked out the competition and it was pretty fierce. The Derby officiator was awesome. He had made his own track and had electronic timers accurate to 1/100 of a second. No arguments about who finished where! Each car ran three times (down the three derby tracks) and the time was averaged. Winner was the fastest overall time. We came in thirteen out of sixteen.
I have to admit that my heart dropped a bit as Mike’s car fell behind the two it was racing. Every Dad wants to see their boy win, but it wasn’t in the cards for us. We did the best we could. We were careful to follow all the rules, Mike did a lot of the work himself and we learned a lot about areodynamics, friction and physics. As we were inspecting the car after the race we discovered that one of the axle grooves in the pine had broken and the wheel was’t aligned correctly causing it to rub on the track. We’ll have to be more vigilant next time!
Second Run for Mike:
For his effort Mike won “Sportiest Car”:
Here are the final standings and the times to beat at the next Derby.
The other day the kids decided to mix some blue chalk with pain and become smurfs. I think I’d like to be a Smurf – they seemed to be having a great time. I gave Chloe her first piano lesson (mostly she hit my hand and said “No!”).
And then my computer decided to break. As soon as I hit the power button the fan would come on full blast and the laptop would shut off. I surmised the computer thought it was overheating and decided to take it apart. I gave it a good cleaning and it seems to work fine now. I love taking things apart, just for the record. But, for the same record, I don’t like it when things break.
We had a marathon game of UNO the other night. This is the first time I can recall Gabe playing with his own hand of cards. He needed a little help but did pretty well! We’re just waiting on one more now- although she certainly tries to play.