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HANDBOOK HELP
The Science of Racing
If you’ve built and raced a Pinewood Derby car in Cub Scouts, you’ve dabbled in mechanical engineering. Mechanical engineers design and construct machines, products and technology systems. If it has a moving part, a mechanical engineer has likely worked on it.
A Pinewood Derby car is a wooden block on wheels. Pretty basic, but to race this simple machine down a track as quickly as you can requires some scientific knowledge about weight distribution, gravity, drag and friction.
For most Pinewood Derby races, cars should not weigh more than 5 ounces, but getting the weight close to that number helps with the car’s speed. You might need to add weights to your car to do this. If you place those weights near the rear