Gravity Car Race 2013

Gravity Car Race Video Clip Challenge Winners

Gravity Car Race 7-A Class - Winner

Gravity Car Race 12-C Class - Winner

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By Sokunnita Chhay, Pichtevy Lim, Sreypich Try, 7F

Before the competition, we tested our car to check if something went wrong or not. We repeated the testing several times until the event started. After seeing some of the cars racing, we started to lose hope little by little, because all the participants did very well.

When it was our turn, we felt nervous yet excited. When the car was set to go, we all hoped it would travel a long distance. The car set off and finally stopped in front of a wall which seemed to be far away… “21 metres” one of the teachers announced. The moment he announced the distance that our little car had traveled, we all jumped and screamed and ran to our car. It was such a good feeling to know that we, as the group of 3 had won first place in the girls’ section. We never thought we would do this well. We’re so happy that we could achieve first place this time.

By Lucklita Theng, 7F

For the first time in Zaman’s history, a Gravity Car Race was being held. Just hearing the words made us very curious. Loads of questions came to our mind, what are we going to learn from this? When are we doing this? And especially how are we going to do this? Gladly, the answers came as soon as we started wondering.

When we had found out all the details, we got into groups of up to three and began to work right away. Our group included two of my friends, Noryda Phal, Baramey Phan, and me. At first, we did some thinking about the car we were going to make. Then, as I had most of the materials and enough assistance to make it, it was decided I would handle the physical work. It wasn’t easy but my friends gave me motivation and plenty of ideas about how to work faster. Some did come in handy. When the car was finished, it was time to test it. We brought our car to test during a physics session. Our car was ok but it needed bigger wheels, a heavier load and thicker nylon strings. We had a group discussion for a moment and decided what to do. At the competition, we waited with anxiety and excitement as each of the grades raced their cars. It took a while till it was our turn, seventh graders to race. As I watched my friends, in other groups, race their cars, I cheered them on with excitement. When it was our turn, I prayed and prayed that nothing bad would happen. The results were fantastic! Not only was the car racing fine, it went the second furthest! That was it! We won second place! Woo hoo! I cheered as another friends’ group’s car won first place! 7-F had stolen first and second place. To me, that was awesome. Noryda told me that she felt really happy that things finally worked out and paid off. Baramey added that she was flattered to have our group be in the top three winners!

By Long Long Duch, Mao Lokey, Sopheakbunna Ben, 8C

Every year, our school has a lot of competitions. But this year is really special. We got to compete in a Gravity Car Race Competition. This competition was the first success that I had with my group. I want to say thanks to my teacher and my sister Somania. they always support me. It’s a real pleasure. I really enjoy it. If you want to be successful, you have to try harder and harder to get it and don’t forget everything is in our hands.

By Kimrotha Ty, 11A

To be the winner of the competition, my partner and I worked really hard. We had failed in our attempts to make a gravity car a couple of times and it had been a waste of time and money. So we decided to give up, but one day my parents told me not to give up so I followed their advice. Then I went to ask my teacher to give me some good advice.After that my partner and I decided to build the car again but this time we had thought very hard before we build it .Finally our new car was completed and we took it for a first test and it really worked. At last! I’d like to thank Mr. Davut and the students of 11A for their brilliant ideas. Without their support I’m sure I might not have won this competition.

By Chhayvireak Hak, Seng Hap Ouk, 7A

When we first heard the news of the gravity car challenge, we weren’t really excited about it because first of all every class was competing and we thought there was no chance of winning against grades that are higher than us.

After the news had been around for about a week, we finally decided that we actually wanted to join in the fun that everybody was having. We signed up and the bad news came when we saw the deadline date for the challenge: only 2 days left. We rushed home and started working on it. We started a plan and it was in the shape of a truck, we took it to the carpenter and rushed them to finish in one day. I was surprised that they finished it so fast. After school when I got home we started painting the car. We had a plan to make it colorful but it didn’t look good on the car so we just went with plain white and gray. We let it dry overnight and in the morning after breakfast we tested the car and I was pretty impressed with how far it could go. We actually did some rearrangement on the wheelbase to make it go even farther. There was no time to waste, we weren’t done with fixing the wheelbase and we only had 20 minutes left until the tournament. We were glad we had it done just in time and got to school fast enough.

We saw the cars that higher grades made and pretty much they were huge and stiff. We were pretty much the underdog when we placed our car next to everyone else’s. We saw a few people race before us and they did pretty well, but now it was our turn to race. Our heart was pumping hard and this made us very nervous, we set up our position and added a little extra touch to it by placing a bass in the car to make it look cooler and to attract more attention.

The car started, gravity was pulling the piece of metal down, making the car go forward, farther and farther it went until it hit its stop point. The measure was 46 meters, losing by a little. We had our second try and this time we took out the bass to reduce the weight of the car and it worked as it got around 48 meters until it stopped. Our third try was our last chance and as the car pushed off; we were all watching carefully and closely following the car, every stride it took until it reached its limit point which was around about 50 meters. We were disappointed that we didn’t get first place, but we still cheered and were very proud that we had done very well and got second place, as we are the youngest in the school. We were happy about our results, as the first place car was 4 grades above us and the difference between our cars was only a few meters.

We would like to thank everyone in 7A for helping us with this and especially our homeroom teacher Mr. Mehmet Esen and our physics teacher Mr. Davut Aslan for helping us with this challenge.