What Car/Wheel Design Goes the Fastest and the Farthest

Max Smith

Question

What car can go the fastest and the farthest with different sized wheels

Hypothesis

I think that a sloped car with large wheels would go the farthest because their would be no wind resistance and the wheels wouldn't be too small

Conclusion

I concluded that sloped and sleek shapes are good for car bodies. The have little or no wind resistance that hold them back and/or stops them. The blocky shapes especially hold them back because of it’s shape.

Abstract

What Car/Wheel Design Goes the Fastest

and the Farthest

I wanted to find what shape of car and size of wheel can go the farthest and fastest. I wanted to find this out because i’ve been really interested in 3D printing. So, I wanted to see if I could make cars that work, and what do you know, it worked! So Then I took it a little further and said to myself, “hey, I should see how far my cars can go with different designs and wheel sizes. My hypothesis was that I think that a sloped car with large wheels would go the farthest because their would be no wind resistance and the wheels wouldn't be too small and couldn’t hold the weight.

First off, I made the car bodies out of shapes which are a square, cylinder, triangle, circle, sloped shape, and a sports car. Then I made the different sized wheels. Following those two steps I asked my teacher Mr. Fritz to print them out in plastic for me with his 3D Printer. The fourth step includes putting the actual printed model together. I used wooden skewer as axles for the cars. The last step is testing the cars. I did one car at a time with one set of wheels at a time. I pushed the car down a small ramp and measured how fast it went using a speedometer app on my phone and how far it traveled.

The results of what I collected were completely expected. The sloped car did travel the farthest out of the cars that were tested. Sliding down the ramp it traveled 6ft with the big wheels and with the small wheels it went 5 ½ft. It was the fastest car by going .67 mph, it probably went this fast because of it’s shape. The car that was last was the square car. It only went 2ft. with big wheels and the small wheels. It went .15mph, it went that much because of there’s a lot of wind resistance. Most of the cars didn’t go that far because of their shape.

I concluded that sloped and long car bodies can go with no or little wind resistance. My hypothesis was correct because I said the sloped car would do the best and it did. A error was that the big wheels didn’t do that good with some of the cars. To make it better I would make the car bodies bigger.

Procedure

• 1. First I will print different shapes of cars and sizes of wheels

  2. Then I will put the models together

  3. After that I’ll push one at a time down a ramp and measure how fast it is going

  4. Then when it stops I'll measure the distance

  5. Then I will put it all into a graph to see which one went the farthest and fastest