March 31, 2001

In this final Saturday Explorations class students were asked to play the part of design engineers for the 'Knievel Project', in which a toy daredevil stunt car is lauched from a track atop of a set of concrete steps, hopefully to land 'safely' on a properly placed landing pad somewhere below. Students took measurements at the design site (the geometry of the steps), and then took data from an experimental setting in which the car was launched from the track into a bed of clay, where markings of distance traveled could be easily measured. The experimental data was then used in a computer model of parabolic motion to determine initial launch speeds and a set of design parameters (location of landing pad, geometry of launch track, starting point for the stunt car) for the actual stunt.

With design parameters in hand, the 'Project Knievel' stunt track was set up and the stunt car launched - with a successful landing directly on the landing pad!