CO2 Cars

CO2 cars act as our class final! These dragsters will task students to use all of the skills they used during the year such as; research, designing, brainstorming, sketching, using 3d drawing programs, lab safety, hand tools, power tools, and following instructions. And of course there are strict size, weight and design constraints on the dragsters that if not adhered to then their car will be disqualified.

Students draw their dragster using a 3d drawing program and then cut out their design in the lab. After a lot of sanding, the cars are painted, assembled and raced. There is also math, aerodynamics, science and physics incorporated in this project as students complete all the needed work.

There are a few routes students can take with their design. One route is making the car as small as legally possible

There are a few routes students can take with their design. One route is making the car as small as legally possible which will make the car go faster. Another route is to not worry about the speed and simply focus on design. The third route is a blend of having a well designed car that is also fast- maybe not as fast and the smaller cars but will still be pretty fast and look great.

We race on a track that is approximately 55-60 feet (depending on the year) and some cars will make the finish line in under 1/2 a second! After the races, students calculate how fast their car went in mph as well as the real feel speed due to the size of the car.