New York Times, Published: October 22, 2008

 

Practically Speaking, Inspiration Can Be Found in Many Places, but You Need to Be Looking

By MICKEY MEECE

 

Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, a physics professor, said she got her idea when she was changing the channels one day and happened upon a Nascar race. Without warning, she recalled, one of the cars hit an outside wall. None of the cars had bumped, she said, and there were no engine failures or flat tires. So what happened?

 

It was not idle curiosity. To solve the problem, she immersed herself in racing by spending time with pit crews, crew chiefs, mechanics and drivers, and eventually wrote, “The Physics of Nascar.” The book traces a race car from its design to its race to the finish line.

 

Sometimes, Ms. Leslie-Pelecky said, she finds herself on the track and thinks, “How did I get here?” It is because of her “pit bull gene,” she decided. “When you get to a problem, you don’t let go until you solve it.”

 

(The answer to the mystery of the Nascar crash, by the way, was that a trailing car had changed the shape of the air-flow over the first car, which in turn had reduced the downward air pressure on it, causing its wheels to slip as if it were on ice, and it skidded into the wall.)

 

Ms. Mehrotra, Mr. Heim and Ms. Leslie-Pelecky were invited to share their moments of inspiration at the 2008 IdeaFestival in Louisville, Ky., last month, created by Kris Kimel after he had his own “Aha!” moment.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/business/smallbusiness/23sbiz.html?ref=smallbusiness

 

 

WALL STREET JOURNAL September 12, 2008

The Physics of Nascar

 

Now that the Olympics are over, we can return to watching a bunch of guys going around in circles. Indeed, the Chase for the Cup -- the last 10

races of the Nascar season -- starts this weekend in New Hampshire. As

Diandra Leslie-Pelecky makes clear in "The Physics of Nascar," there is

more to oval-track racing than mere centripetal force. A professor of physics at the University of Texas-Dallas, Ms. Leslie-Pelecky explains the science and technology that go into a racing car's performance. Her pithy history of metallurgy helps us to understand

why Nascar teams, for the car frame, use steel that has "between 0.15 and 0.20 percent carbon by weight and a bit of manganese thrown in." This composition makes the metal just flexible enough to bend into a protective

roll cage yet strong enough to survive a hard hit into the wall at 190 miles per hour. To manage the heat that 800-horsepower engines generate, Nascar engineers have devised a pressurized radiator cap that raises the boiling point of engine water to a manageable 275 degrees. . . .The book is timely, too, describing the so-called Car of Tomorrow, just finishing its first season. . . . . Veteran race teams are still trying to figure it out. Ms. Leslie-Pelecky already has.

 

-- Mark Yost, September 12, 2008; Page W6

 

The News Journal, September 19, 2008

 

'Science and math win races,' NASCAR author says,
"The same science that applies to Jeff Gordon going 180 miles an hour around a track is the same science that applies to us driving down the freeway," said Leslie-Pelecky. . . . [She also] discovered every team in NASCAR already has a Ph.D. on the payroll.. . .  "There are some very smart people out there," she said.

by Kristian Pope, Dover Delaware News Journal

 

 

*********************************************************

What they’ve been saying about PHYSICS OF NASCAR

since Daytona 2008

(SEE ALSO WWW.STOCKCARSCIENCE.COM)

 

"I don’t recall growing too excited about the old textbook problems involving locomotives lumbering at different velocities out of cities A and B. But I would have paid attention to two cars traveling 200 miles an hour separated by inches."-- John Tierney, NYT, February 12th.

 

[THE PHYSICS OF NASCAR explains] "how you design and manufacture a car that will move at those tremendous speeds but will handle with precision ..." Booklist 3/1/2008

 

"This book is as much about the chemistry of NASCAR as the physics, and the sport proves complex and technical." –

Sam Kean, February 9th, New Scientist