Pinewood Derby 1 of 4

The pinewood derby is a model car race for scouts age 8-10. It's a simple wooden car with plastic wheels held on with nails as axles. They roll down a sloped track accelerated only by the force of gravity. The key is to make the wheel movement on the axles as frictionless as possible by smoothing out all surfaces that the wheels may rub against.
This will be my third pinewood derby as a scout leader. The race is two weeks away and the last two years my son Shule has been in the program so we made cars together. The first year he made the "Mammal Mobile".
He decided to make it brown and green camouflage with yellow eyes in front. The pink sticker is just for identification purposes during the race and wasn't part of the design. It wasn't a bad car but we got to the race as it was starting and didn't have time to apply any graphite. This was a disastrous move and I'm pretty sure his was the slowest car that year. Each time it went down the track you could hear the squeaking of the un-lubricated wheels. His was the only car that sounded like that! I felt so awful but he won the "best paint job" award and went home not totally devastated.

With lesson learned about how important graphite on the wheels is the next year was much better. He made the "Titan" which was to resemble a ship. He placed 4th out of about 18 and it was really very close. This is his car on the right just coming in short of the second place winner in red. You can imagine how close he was to the third place car.

The derby is the biggest and potentially the funnest event of the whole Cub Scout year, it doesn't come without stress though. The biggest issue I have with the race is that building a suitable car is not a job that most 8-10 year olds can practically do. It is almost totally necessary to have help from family and scout leaders which is fine but because of the competitive aspect (trophies are awarded to top 3 places) it just gets a little weird knowing that the boys don't all get equal ammounts of adult help. In order to combat the potential injustice, our troop devotes 3 January meetings to working on the cars together so kids without access to tools and help at home can have a chance for adult leaders to help. Seems like a good idea but what we can do is still limited and we mostly just get the cars shaped and sanded which has a neglidgible effect on how fast the car is. Getting the wheels straight, spinning smoothly and the cars weighted up to 5 ounces is what makes most of the difference and these are the last things you do.

When I was a kid I remember participating in 2 derbys, I vaguely remember a red car and a blue car. I remember working on my back porch with the block of pine and a hand saw. I made a cut that looked fine from my angle but it turns out that it was croocked and the cut on the other end of the block went partway through where the axle was supposed to go. I was very upset and felt that I ruined my car. Tears were shed. Later I did get help to salvage it and we were able to make it so the wheel would stay on and I could race it, but I never had one of the fast cars. It was ok that I never placed, I would have liked to but looking back on it I'm glad I even knew how to use a saw by myself even if I couldn't cut straight. My boys aren't good with a saw, I think most 8 year olds who aren't raised on a farm or in a woodshop or something won't have the muscle to properly use a hand saw and heaven knows we won't let them get their hands on power tools. I don't even know how to use a power saw.

So I let my boys design the car, I cut it with the hand saw and they help with sanding and painting. I have them help a little as I spin the nails in a drill and smooth and polish them. I try to explain about reducing friction and why we do these things but until the race is actually happening, they pretty much only care about making their car look cool.

This will be Shule's 3rd and final race, but I now have Shazer in the program so we are doing 2 cars this year and we have brother against brother which adds a whole new level of competetion. So far we have the cars cut and have started to do some sanding. Shule's toad car is to the right and Shazer's rocket style car to the left (facing away from the camera to show off the fancy rear).I will do 3 more posts about the derby, one next week all about getting the wheels and axles ready for speed, I'll post some photos and share what tips I know. Then I'll do a short post just before the race to show how the cars turned out and another just after the race with the results of course.

50 State Quarters

We started collecting the commemorative state quarters quite a while ago and just before Christmas I got the last one we were waiting for, Alaska. When Arizona's was introduced this past summer we took the family to the state capitol building where Janet Napolitano spoke and then representatives from the mint passed out shiny new AZ quarters to all the kids. Then they gave out free mint ice cream drumsticks for everybody. We then walked through the free museum that is a permanent fixture of the capitol building, it was a good activity.

So here is our collection (worth at least $12.50)

Clare and the Reasons

Went to a show with Jon Stone over Thanksgiving and while I really enjoyed the headliner: My Brightest Diamond, for their inventive music I'm a real sucker for a poppy song so I also really liked Clare and the Reasons, the openers. Found this video posted on their myspace site and thought some of you would appreciate this classic 80's cover.

Pythagorean Theorem

For ASU students today is reading day, a day between the last day of class and the first day of finals. At UofA I think they call it dead day, maybe because you're dead if you haven't studied for finals yet. It turns out that I'm going to school anyway for a test review session but before I get myself lost in cramming I wanted to write out the Pythagorean Theorem proof I promised. This one will be much more coherent than my last post.

I did it in two parts, part 2 is the only part that is necessary but I wrote out part 1 anyway in case you wanted to follow my whole train of thought as I was on the bus trying to prove to myself that 'c' squared really does equal 'a' squared plus 'b' squared.

You might also notice that the distance formula d = sqrt[(y_2-y_1)^2+(x_2-x_1)^2] is essentially the same thing as the Pythagorean Theorem. It comes up again and again, the 3D version is d = sqrt[(y_2-y_1)^2+(x_2-x_1)^2+(z_2-z_1)^2]

We sometimes speak of magnitutes of vectors and really it's the Pythagorean Theorem again.
Useful stuff.
Now I've got to get back to Laplace transformations, which are also very useful however I won't be giving you a proof any time soon! If you need help with math you should check out Paul's Online Math Notes, a very good resource for Algebra, Trig, Calculus and Differential Equations.

So Quadradical Dude!

Lorin seems to think that I'm some kind of math whiz because I've been getting good grades in Calculus, while in reality it's a real struggle for me to understand all of the amazing math that other people have figured out. Through all the formulas and proofs I first try to understand why it works, sometimes I can and sometimes it's beyond me so in those cases I just try to understand how to use it properly so I can get the right answers!

One basic formula that I first learned before I cared about "why it works" is the quadratic formula. I just accepted it at the time and have used it since then. Now that I'm thinking more deeply about such things, I feel a little guilty every time I use it, like I'm copying someone else's homework. Well today I put a stop to the guilt, I decided to derive it without looking at a proof.

I know most of you probably don't care too much about this but Lorin was asking if my blog is about math, no it's not a math blog but I'll do this one post for him. So here it is Lorin, an old favorite and a standard of elementary Algebra: The Quadratic Formula. Use it to impress people at parties!

First factor out the coefficient of the x^2 term, you can immediately eliminate it by dividing both sides by it (for some reason I kept it around till the next step in my work). Then you must do the dreaded "complete the square" technique, I was feeling a little bold today so I did a few steps in my head on this one. Then it's just a matter of isolating x, get rid of the square by taking the square root of both sides (don't forget your plus/minus) and simplify. My circuits teacher recently used the quadratic equation in a different form as noted in the figure, the reason why he likes it is because of the repeated b/2a term. I had never seen it like that before but now I see where it comes from.

going back in time

Jon Stone spearheaded a memorial for Only Anything in the form of a new blog with added mp3 downloads and photo albums. He set it up the framework and then opened it up to the group (band members and close friends) to add content at our liberty. The whole premise is that we just can't let go of the good old days so we are going to relive them by sharing our memories with each other (and whoever else will listen). It came together as planned and is still growing.

Shortly after its conception, a new spark was ignited as Jon Stone saw an upcoming Thanksgiving trip to Arizona as an opportunity to have not only a digital memorial but an actual flesh and blood Only Anything revival. It is not a total flashback as it won't be the original 5 together again with guitars in hand, we have some substitutes lined up. In fact, Jon and I will be the only original members participating but we are doing it in the spirit of old times. Any input from the other members is appreciated.

The events include playing a lot of music (old and new) and getting some recordings of it. In trying to decide what to play we have both picked some old songs and agreed to finish an old song idea and come up with a completely new one. The problem for me is that I have many new song ideas that are promising but all incomplete and time is ticking away. When I told Jon that I was planning on pitching 4 or 5 snippets of song ideas to him he got pretty excited and suggested that we instead raise the bar to do a whole new Only Anything album. Clearly this would be a long term project as we are both doused in schoolwork.

We quickly dismissed this idea as impractical and reverted our focus back to the few songs that we want to do this Thanksgiving. We really try to keep our feet on the ground but as an example of our stubbornness let's look at the new blog and call it what it really is: evidence of our inability to let things go. So, I wouldn't be surprised if in some time down the road there is an announcement of the new Only Anything album (limited release).

Don't hold me to that but feel free to browse www.onlyanything.com to experience music, photos, artwork and other artifacts from the greatest band that ever was. Some of those old songs are better than others, we just put it all out there though. Good or bad, it's history. Eventually we will get some better video up there, I know it exists.

little kid media rocks!

Generally, I don't really like going to the movies. There's a lot out there that I'm not interested in. I find myself enjoying books and movies geared towards a younger audience. I tried reading Love in the time of Cholera because we got it from the library and some people have recommended it, but I hated it and after forcing myself to get half way, I realized I was wasting my time.
I now recommend to you 3 movies that aren't so "mature"; I have watched each one twice and I count none of that time as wasted. So here it goes, 3 movies that you should watch for a good time!

Son of Rambow - Totally liked it. Especially how Will says "Lee Carter". Watch it and you'll see.

Little Manhattan - A 10 year old in love, but it resonates with this 31 year old.

Millions - Good movie, Strange at parts but still refreshingly different. (the band Muse in soundtrack!)