Gravity-Driven Virtual Racing

This is a Windows-based program simple enough for the Cub Scout to use yet deep enough for the adult gravity-driven race car engineer to apply to car design. No more will there be debates like the relative merits of increasing weight vs. aerodynamic drag coefficients or wheel moment of inertia vs. wheel radius. All interacting effects of up to 14 different car parameters have been included in this program.

The Pinewood Derby Car application requires that you input 12 of these easy-to-measure parameters as described in the booklet Pinewood Derby Car Design and the Virtual Race or the Measure Parameters E-book version. The larger cars require 2 more parameters, namely wheel weight and car length. The fundamental mathematical physics of gravity-driven race cars has been developed in great detail in the first part of the book The Physics of the Pinewood Derby - With Engineering Applications. The solutions to the equations of motion for any car have been incorporated into this program and will give as output the race finish time for any car, or any group of cars, racing on any size of the given track types. For example, the race time for the horizontal run solution equation is shown in the Example of Theoretical page. The program gives as output the ramp time, the velocity entering the horizontal run, the time spent on the horizontal run, and the total race time. The track ramps available are the fundamental circular arc ramp and the popular inclined plane ramp. The ramps may be of any height and any horizontal length. The tracks also have a horizontal run that may be of any length provided it does not become so long that the car cannot make it to the finish line (because of friction, air drag, etc).