“Science in Racing” STLP KY State
Championships – Slot Car Display
The Event: Thursday, May 21st 2009, a group of thousands of students, teachers, parents and staff descended on Lexington Kentucky’s Rupp Arena for the Kentucky State Student Technology Leadership Program’s (STLP) State Championship. And what is STLP? The Student Technology Leadership Program (STLP) is a project-based learning program that empowers students in all grade levels to use technology to learn and achieve. It was established in 1994 by the STLP State Advisory Council, which is composed of teachers, students and community leaders. Student-designed projects, products and services are created to help the school and community.
The program is open to ALL students in all grade levels in every school (P-16) in Kentucky.
At Thursdays event, projects were selected to participate in the national competition in Washington D.C.
Along with all of the student’s projects, several interactive displays were on hand to demonstrate how technology is applied in the every day world. This year a theme of “Science in Racing” was selected. Along with the University of Kentucky’s solar powered competition car, I was asked to set up a slot car track and tie some educational facts about 1:1 racing as well as the science applied to slot cars.
The Concept: After securing some advice and donations from some of the HO slot car manufacturers, we set about coming up with the design of the display. Tying science to racing of any size was easy. The challenge was to make the information understandable for a 3rd grader and not “uncool” for a senior in high school to be interested! So here’s what we came up with thanks to my wife, a substitute teacher and slot car fan! At the local zoo, they have wall plagues with question on them about the animal in the display. You open the plaque and the answers are inside. Running with that idea, we made up 6 plaques with racing history and breakthroughs tied to science and did 6 plaques tying slot cars to the same ideas. Kids could then earn lap time by reciting one of the facts from these plaques. It worked so well we had teachers, parents and students coming back at the end of the day telling us how much they learned and how fun the slot cars were…and of course, “Where can I get one of these?”.
The Track, The Cars, The Setup: The track, power supplies and banners were donated by Tomy AFX and Steve Russell. We all thank you Steve and AFX, it may not have happened otherwise! We had a 16ft x 4ft table to build on with an additional 3ft x 8ft table for displays. The track was a simple 4-lane all banked oval, each lane color coded and using AFX Tri-Power power packs, set on the intermediate level (12V). Controllers were out of the box AFX units, painted to match the lane color it controlled, The cars were box stock units from AFX (SG+ and SRT Turbo Chassis), Life-Like (M-Car and T-Car), and Auto World’s Super III. Everything on the chassis was straight out of the box, except the bodies. Those were custom painted stock cars donated from Speed Inc. Each car body was painted up to represent the KY state education agencies, The KY Department of Education, The Office of Educational Technology, KY Educational Technology Systems and The Student Technology Leadership Program. Eight chassis were used in rotation. While 4 chassis ran, the other 4 were cleaned, oiled and ready to mount the bodies for the next set of racers. Kids earned 5 minutes of track time after they were able to give us a fact about racing science.
The Racing: The racing format was simple. We did not keep laps and each heat was 5 minutes. Kids would line up behind each controller, waiting their turn to state a racing fact and run their 5 minutes. We started the track at 8:45 AM and ran non-stop until 4:45. Through that 8 hour span we had no arguments, pushing or line cutting. The kids were great. Another amazing thing was we only had 31 wrecks for that whole 8 hours. I think that was directly attributed to the 12 volt power and the magnet cars used. We had kids from 3rd grade to seniors in high school running the cars. The cars were all very close in speed and handling and there were many runs with the kids keeping the cars fender to fender. What surprised me was that we never had a break. We had kids lined up 4 and 5 deep waiting their turn to race. That was all day and with different kids, there were only a handful of repeaters. Most stayed after they raced and watched the others as they took their turns. We estimated that the cars were turning a lap every 2 seconds. That means 30 laps per minute or 150 laps for each 5 minute segment. That turns into 1800 laps per hour and we ran 8 hours straight. So each car ran 7,200 laps (remember, we had 8 cars rotating every other heat) and all 8 cars turned 57,600 laps! The only DNF’s were pick up shoes. All 8 chassis were running at the end of the day, although the pick up shoes were worn through. We stopped once all of the spares were used up. I’ll remember to bring more pick ups next time.
The Results: The “Racing in Science” display was a huge success! So much so, we have been asked to come back next year! We are getting more space also, so the track can be larger and we can display some additional facts for the kids to learn. This operation was done with 3 people. We will definitely need more if the track is extended. The students, teachers, parents and STLP staff were very happy with the results. The booth was full up and until we finally shut the power off. We still had kids in line. I will have to remember more pick up shoes next year!
Promote the Hobby! This was a unique opportunity for me to be able to share this hobby with so many kids at one time. I often display a portable track at YMCAs and Boys and Girls Clubs. I’m a big believer in sharing the hobby and trying to get the next generation involved in order to keep our hobby alive and well for the future. You will have to invest some time, but believe me, when you see the kids’ eyes light up, or better yet, they start asking question about how they work, it’s all worth it.