People with fast street cars like to put them through their paces at the quarter-mile track. One way to get your quarter-mile time is to just buckle up and put the pedal to the metal. But if your car’s design is suboptimal, you won’t be taking home the bragging rights.
So here’s this week’s question: Can automotive engineers predict a car’s quarter-mile time using physics? And could the physics suggest some tricks to make a car faster? Yes and yes! Let’s see how.
Simple Model for an Accelerating Car
When a car launches off the start, its increase in speed is described by its acceleration (the rate of change of velocity). But