The 3rd Ottawa participates annually in Cub Cars, which are a fun event that combines science, physically building something, learning how kinetics work, and also building something that youth can race.  It is a very popular activity and for many youth is their first experience with tools, sandpaper, paint and more.  The 3rd Ottawa often participates in larger area Cub Car Rallies that see 200 or more youth racing.  The youth often get to race at least 20 races.  It’s a lot of fun and a great way for parents and youth to collaborate on a real crafting project.

Sample Cub Car Design And Paint Land Full

3rd Ottawa Aluminum Track

We purchased the track from Microwizard, who continue to make high quality, durable aluminum tracks, starting gates and automated finish lines.

While all of the instructions are included in the case, from time to time they may need to be reprinted, or may get lost or damaged.  New instructions can be downloaded and/or printed here.

Beaver Buggy Race Gym Port Content

Science-based tips for Cub Car building

In the past few years, many Scout troops in North America have published tips and tricks to building fast Cub Cars.  In the United States Scouts BSA, they are called Pinewood Derby races – but the cars and weights are identical (except in ounces instead of grams) to our Canadian Cub Cars.

Perhaps the most influential Cub Car / Pinewood video comes from Mark Rober, an American YouTuber, engineer, inventor and educator.  Mark is an engineer who worked for NASA for 9 years, including work on the Curiosity Mars rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  He also worked at Apple in their Special Projects Group.  Rober made a widely viewed YouTube video called “The science of making the fastest pinewood derby car”, which you can view on this article from Scout Life magazine (US publication):

You can also watch Mark’s video on YouTube directly here:

This video has become the ‘gold standard’ for Cub Cars and can be followed to help your Cub make a fast Cub Car.  Note that some Cubs care more about the LOOK of their car and that’s fine, there are often trophies for show cars as well (which aren’t always the fastest).  Mark has a simple way of defining the physics and making it understandable to youth – I encourage parents and youth to watch this video together.

In Mark Rober’s video, you’ll see he quotes and uses the work of Dr Scott Acton, who did a year of research with his son into the physics of building a winning Pinewood Derby / Cub Car.  Dr Acton has a 2-hour video about all of the science they documented, and the “why” behind some of the elements they discovered make a winning car.  You can see clips and purchase that DVD here: https://www.pinewoodphysics.com/