Wind Racers: Science

In science, we have been making wind racers. It had to go as far as possible under the power only of a leafblower. We were allowed limited resources including paper, cardboard and tape. We were also supplied a little cart that our racers would be built upon. Lots of other groups came up with regular sail designs, but Robbie (the mastermind of our group) came up with a radical design the consisted of a cardboard back and a whole lot of masking tape. It would have small strips of cardboard around the sides, a longer piece down the middle as a support, and a large piece for the back, and the rest would be covered by tape. It didn't look very good, but we thought it would work reasonably well. It had a large area for the wind to hit and propel it forward, an aerodynamic design to minimize wind resistance and light materials. Lots of people doubted us, but when we came to the actual testing of the racers, we flew. The test was to see how far they got. We chose to go sixth (for whatever reason) out of seven, so we at least got to see how well the others did before ours. Some others tried and did alright but not great. But then when someone went further then everyone's so far, so they did a victory lap. Then it was our turn. We hoped it would make their victories premature. And it did. The so far best was just over 2 metres, ours went and blew it out of the park, 3.1 metres. The last racer didn't get anywhere clos to that. We did another run after that and it went 5 metres! It's fair to say people were jealous. We then got to redesign our racers for another run. We didn't change much apart from putting a little tape edge around the outside of the back. Other groups were adopting large cardboard on the back of theirs like we had done, and so as a back-up plan if theirs somehow became better, we would put lynx spray on the wheels to grease them up and decrease friction. Others weren't happy. But the teacher said it was fair game, if they were going to take our basic design advantage, why not make a new one. We didn't end up going further, eventually going 4 metres, but it was still the best.

I had a lot of fun with this activity and hope I could do more like this in the future.

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