Building a better Pinewood Derby car with science

Every corner of human endeavor has its researchers, and that includes activities that we might think are just supposed to be fun for kids, like pinewood derbies. In case you don't know, a pinewood derby where kids build a car out of a block of wood, add some nails for axles and plastic wheels and then race them head-to-head on a length of track with an elevated starting line. It's all about kids having fun with gravity and little chunks of timber.

Except it isn't at all, because dads are involved, and that means that winning pinewood derby cars use the kind of science and technology real car enthusiasts are familiar with: center-of-mass studies, polished axles, lightweight wheels and copious use of graphite.

YouTube regular Mark Rober gives an excellent explanation of what goes into a champion derby run, with science help from Dr. Scott Acton, a physicist with spacecraft and defense component maker Ball Aerospace. But Rober mostly uses children's blocks to lay it all out, and then he wins, which are things we can all understand. You'll find an education in the video below.