Just one more proud dad thing and then I'll spare you for a while, I
promise...
My 13 year old son Kyle has a class called "Technology". For the past couple
of months they've been working on a project that is WAY cooler than anything I
ever did in school. Basically, they were told to design a drag racer powered
by a pulse of air from a nozzle it is backed onto. He was given parameters
like minimal measurements, diameter of the hole to fit over the nozzle, etc.
He drew up and submited his plans in multiple views, then programmed
those into cad-cam software which was used in conjunction with a milling
machine to create the car. When finished, the cars are raced side-by-side and
electronically timed to the thousandths of a second. Speed is also captured.
Lowest ET wins.
I sat down with him at the start and let him ask me anything he wanted, then
he drew up the design on his own. He knows about aerodynamics, drag, weight,
etc. because we always talk about F1 cars and how the engineers have as much
to do with winning as the drivers. He was just bouncing his own ideas off me.
All I've known about it till tonight was that he's doing OK and was not behind
in the work. very secretive.
Today, the races began. They will finish up at the next class later this
week. Guess what? (drum roll, please) Kyle's car is not only the fastest and
quickest in his class, but in the entire school! Eliminations are not over
yet, but they are not allowed to alter the cars anymore (they're all locked in
the display case till next round) so chances are he'll do well. His car
reached over 19 mph and had an ET of something like .71 seconds. Apparently
the next quickest car in the school is something like a .782 (I may have the
numbers wrong, but I the relative times are about right.
David (can't stop grinning) Booker
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