Car Science

Did you know that cars actually have science behind them? To tell the truth, they have a TON of science under the hood. This book mainly talks about both forces and motion, and car stuff, with occasional breaks to show the reader stuff like the Top Ten CRAZY ideas, (I like this part!) with ten totally FREAKY cars or concept cars, my favorite of which is a Swiss concept called the Rinspeed Presto, which, to avoid tight parking spots, can shrink from a four- to a two-seat roadster at the touch of a button! This book is AWESOME!!!  

I learned about lots of things in this book like how skids can be awful or awesome and the physics of what you are trying (or not trying) to do when you skid. Some of it includes your rear wheels floating off the road slightly, causing you to turn more tightly than you want, or your front wheels doing the same which makes you not turn sharp enough. Or, if all of your wheels lose grip probably on some water, which causes you not to be able to turn at all. Trick drivers can use skids to do awesome tricks, like skidding and turning their car around onto the next lane which would be handy if you really need to turn around fast!  Basically this is a really big skid caused by the rear wheels which I forgot to tell you, is called Oversteer (Understeer is for the front wheel one). In skids it is basically friction and inertia causing problems. Friction, as you probably know, is the force that gives something its grip, even ice has some friction. Inertia is a force that makes something keep moving if it was moving, which I think is also one of Newton's three laws. It also talks about engineering that could be used to prevent skids. Most cars have Antilock Brakes and some have Traction Control. Antilock Brakes do their work when a wheel stops turning because the brake has locked the wheel which can easily happen on wet or icy roads because the brake and the wheel don't have much friction. The system then kicks in and automatically releases and then reapplies the brake quite quickly which allows the wheel to roll just enough to get back its grip.

This book has that much science detail for all of its facts! There are a whole bunch of pictures and words so it's really good for everyone.