Engineers Bringing Soap Box Racing Back Again

kpw10 writes "It appears that soap box racing has made a recent comeback as traditional races are getting big attention again. But at the same it is also adapting itself into a more modern engineering challenge: pro car designers from companies like Audi and BMW just last week raced in California's Extreme Gravity Series, with super aerodynamic racers reaching speeds of 44mph. Meanwhile on the east coast, industrial designers and artists competed in the Durham "Fall Classic Soap Box Invitational" with converted lazy boy recliners and enormous eight foot wheeled vehicles. I hope this is just a sign of what's to come!" We have come a long way since the 1930's.

Re:CMU does this every year.

[amper]

Here. [cmu.edu]

Ah, Sweepstakes...the search for the smallest, lightest girls ad the biggest, strongest guys...the scrambles for rubber bits to be analyzed in the lab...

Rubber Bowl!

[Southpaw018]

Yeah baby, Derby Downs, right next to the Rubber Bowl. Ahh, the memories of growing up in Akron and reading books about our fair city, the Rubber Capitol of the World.


....yeah, I'm glad I live in DC now.

Oh, great.

[game kid]

First I had to deal with reality shows...now I have to watch running public speakers [wikipedia.org] too.

Re:It can be a very dangerous sport.

[peterjhill2002]

I'm a bit younger than 45, but for me, after thinking of CMU, the next thing was "The Little Rascals" I got to watch the reruns when I was little (in the '70s). Their soap box racer, for those who did not see it, featured a dog on a tread mill chasing a cat... I might not remember correctly, but I would not put it past them to have had a turbo mode where the showed the cat a mouse and had a dog chasing a cat chasing a mouse for their engine...

As Edith would have said, "Those were the days"

Do all derby's have hot babes with shaving cream?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in love with derby babe.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47167068@N00/59197733 /in/set-1280245/ [flickr.com]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47167068@N00/59198319 /in/set-1280245/ [flickr.com]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47167068@N00/59198347 /in/set-1280245/ [flickr.com]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47167068@N00/59198403 /in/set-1280245/ [flickr.com]

Re:It can be a very dangerous sport.

[lucas teh geek]

who else but a moderator of course

Re:CMU does this every year.

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope you're not a CMU student.

think of the children.

[calambrac]

Aye, right, you sound like a regular mama's boy. Raced cars at 160? What'd you drive, a pinto? My foot won't let off the gas of my Ferrari at anything less than 200 (even in neighborhoods!). Bikes on public roads? Why, I bike on some private roads - which happen to be on a military artillery range! Scuba dived below 60m? Might as well just be dipping your toe in. Hell, I can hold my breath to 100m while I'm hunting for sharks! You climb rocks, I climbed Everest with only a single Sherpa (who I left behind at 8,000m) and my bare hands and feet. You kayak whitewater, I do that too, but without a paddle and with lead weights tied to my ankles! Rugby is a fun game (for girls and homosexuals), and jiu-jitsu is Japanese for "slap fighting" (yes, I speak Japanese, as well as 43 other languages. I am the last remaining speaker for 16 distinct dialects). Instead of all that pussy stuff I wrestle gorillas that I've loaded up with steroids and bred to be super-intelligent, usually with an arm tied behind my back, sometimes blindfolded.

All women want to have sex with me (which means my ability to maintain an erection for up to 3 weeks at a time, with only an hour of downtime in between, really comes in handy), and all men want to be me (which they someday can, thanks to my extensive genetics research... did I mention that I'm a geneticist, as well as a nuclear physicist, meteorologist, and concert pianist? I also wrote an operating system called Calambracix that is used, interestingly enough, to run candy factories).

You would think that with all I've accomplished, I'd be a bit arrogant, but I'm actually very humble (possibly the most humble of anyone), as is mandated by the spiritual laws of Calambracism (a religion that I founded and, incidentally, am a primary spiritual figure of). It's therefore disappointing to me to hear you brag about your personal exploits as if they should be an example to the rest of the world. Considering how unimpressive your feats are, it would be most disappointing if a young child were exposed to the notion that they could settle for a life like yours. If you were humble like me, you would recognize your inferiority and hide your head in shame, never speaking in this forum again.

Did the poster not RTFA?

[Anonymous Coward]

reaching speeds of 44mph

From the last paragraph of the article:
In the end the fastest gravity racer was the Volvo entry, which hit 54 mph.

Come on, man. We're geeks here. Numbers matter.