Students Encouraged To Race Cars At Ross County School

"Welcome Race Fans!" screams the sign on the wall of the High-Performance Automotive Technology lab. The students in this class are rehabbing a vintage Pontiac, rebuilding a 1933 Ford Coupe from scratch and even converting a Chevy Cavalier to run on hydrogen fuel cells.

But they have an even bigger challenge this week: they have to turn a solid block of wood, four plastic wheels, two metal axels and a drinking straw into a streamlined racing machine able to win a high-stakes competition in front of the entire school.

No pressure. Everybody's watching.

And their rivals could come from anywhere in this school of more than 600 students. The "Physics 500" competition is open to all.

"I was thinking friction reduction, mostly," says Christian Rinehart, a senior at the Pickaway Ross Career and Technology Center. He says he built his car in a single day but it has served him well in past races. He shaved down the sides of the wheels, weighted the bottom and packed white lithium grease into the axel casing (the drinking straw).

"I went for functionality not looks. Obviously, it looks really ugly. But it works really well."

Levi Schaeffer, a junior in the same program, took a totally different approach to the project: his car is designed to look cool from the wheels up.

"I based it off that car back there that we're building," he says, pointing to the real '33 Ford that's in a bunch of pieces on the floor. Levi's model is in much better condition with a bright-orange paint job and metallic details glued onto the wooden frame.

The Physics 500 was started more than a decade ago by automotive instructor Bob Edwards and science teacher Beth Miller who retired recently. Their goal was to teach the students how their academic work dovetails into their practical work. Building the race cars requires them to understand friction, mass, gravity and even aerodynamics.

"They're having fun doing it and don't often realize that they're learning, 'Hey, if I reduce friction, I know my car will go faster,'" says Edwards.

The competition includes more than just the fastest time on the track, students are also judged on design.

"I can work on cars. But to build one out of wood was a lot more difficult," says Lacey Cramblit, a senior in the High-Performance Automotive Technologies class. Unfortunately, her car wasn't able to compete this time because it didn't fit on the track.

The track, assembled in the school's common area, is a pinewood-derby-style affair with four, slotted tracks and built-in electronics that measure each car's race time to the thousandth of a second.

"We have had races where there's been two or three thousandths difference between the winner and the loser," says Edwards with a proud smile.

The double-elimination brackets are displayed on a projected computer screen above the track for all the participants and spectators to see.

Two at a time, the competitors step up to the track, hand their cars to the officials and the races begin. Each run has the potential to be the most exciting two seconds in Ross County; records are set, crashes are cleared away and a few cars even jump completely off the track.

Rinehart's model with the super-greased axels flies down the track in several races but jumps the median in at least one heat; he earns the trophy for third place. Schaeffer's hot rod with the blazing paint job turns out to be too wide to make it out of the starting block at all. It gets stuck at the top of the ramp but, at the end of the day, he still wins Best In Show for his car's flashy look.

The winners don't get to gloat for long. This Physics 500 happens twice a year. And the other competitors are already plotting improvements to their cars and planning to take the title.

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