To Weight or Not to Weight--a pinewood derby experiment

Well, it's that time of year again...science fair project time. Mason did a project last year with his friend and they did it about bottle rockets. This year he did it alone and he did it about pinewood derby cars. He had so much fun making his car. He decided to make it as a monorail. So, the car became the MM--Mason Monorail.


The problem was: does a pinewood derby car go faster with weights or without weights. After he did some research on motion and friction, he came up with the hypothesis that the car with more weight would go faster because it would have more mass to push aside the air molecules and thus have less air friction.

He had so much fun testing this hypothesis. He added 0.5 oz. of weight to the car after every 5 trials. So, when it was all done he got to run his car over 35 times. By the time he was done, the car weighed 7 oz. Strangely enough, the car that went the fastest weighed 5 oz. in total (that includes the 1 oz. of weight added) and each subsequent trial that added weight to the car, slowed it down.

He had over a month to get it done and the week before it was due, there was no school (our district takes a week off for President's Day--it's great).

This was the finished product.

He also had to turn in a notebook that was more detailed than the board, so it was good that he had a week to focus on it. All in all, I think he did a really great job.

He ended up winning first place for 5th grade at school and then went on to the District to be judged there. We are still waiting to find out how he did at District. If he wins at District, then he'll move onto County. Last year, he made it all the way to County and because he was in 4th grade, that was the farthest he could go. It is only at Grade 6 and above that the winners at County have a chance to move onto State. But regardless of how he does from here on out, he is happy with the effort he put into it and we are happy with the effort he put into it.