The journalist who lied

A few hours after that last post, my daily for today morphed into one of my favorite stories I've written. Just wanted to share:

(My suggested headline or sub-head: The Pinewood Derby meets Mr. Wizard)

By MATT WRIGHT

It all comes down to this.

One auto tech specialization class, two cars, best out of three drag races. The winner moves on to the school-wide tournament; the loser goes back to the band saw.

Temple high school sophomore David Fordern holds up his team's car and gives it one last check before it blasts down the track for the first time. The car is carved from a wooden block and looks like a foot-long dragster: big wheels on back, small wheels in front, slim body and the car's engine, a little canister of compressed carbon dioxide, protruding out the back.

"Hey, Glaser," he calls to his teammate Nathan Glaser, a sophomore, who is making sure the fishing line that will guide their car straight and true is taut. "Get over here and kiss this thing for good luck."

Glaser doesn't even look up. "I'm not kissing nothing. Just shoot it."

The class has gathered behind Fordern and Glaser's opponent, senior Johnny Davis, who is manning the launching pad, which is built out of scrap metal, wood and old fishing hooks. His team's car, designed primarily by sophomore Luis Rios, looks like a drastically whittled-down bowling ball.

Finally, after weeks of studying the basics of aerodynamics, then designing and building their cars, the students are ready to see their work in action.

Davis flips a switch and simultaneously uncorks the CO2 "engines" in each car.

Pfft! Hisssssssss…

The dragsters fly down the 40-foot track in less than a second, leaving a cloud of dust from the CO2 at the starting line. Davis's team's car glides over the concrete shop floor at, roughly, over 30 miles an hour. It easily beats Fordern and Glaser's to the pillow that serves as a finish line.

"Ooooooh!" the all-guy class erupts.

Davis is already halfway down the track to retrieve the winner.

"We smoked y'all!" he taunts. "We smoked that car!"

When it comes to studying physics, Newton's apple has nothing on these cars.

But it's more than just physics, as Ernest Knox will tell you. It's also math and engineering and learning to turn a blueprint into a product.

Coach Knox, as the kids call him, teaches the auto tech specialization class, which is a prerequisite to any advanced auto shop class. The class offers students a different kind of education, one aimed at developing practical skills and not confined solely to textbooks.

This is especially important to Knox because his classes often appeal to students who have not performed well in a traditional classroom.

"That's all I've ever had, kids who've been pushed away," he said Tuesday, as his sixth-period class began to drift into the shop classroom crowded with band saws, lathes, sanders and drill presses.

"You've got to find that niche," Knox said. "They all have something they like, you just gotta find it. Spend a little time, talk to them, see what they're interested in."

Knox has 117 kids spread out over five classes. A large number enroll because they love working on cars and have aspirations to become automotive engineers or designers. Others join because they don't enjoy the standard classroom environment. Some come in "expecting a vacation." And, in a few cases, special education students take the class to develop practical skills.

"A major point is that a lot may not get to go to four years of college," he said. "This gives them a skill. It points them to a trade school at least."

But while hands-on is great, he said (and his students agreed), "I think you still need to have the book." The students won't understand theory until they put it into practice, he said, but there are skills, such as reading a blueprint, that can only be learned from the text.

In Knox's class, that book is "Modern Automotive Technology," the same book used in ASE certification. In fact, Knox added, after just two years of classes at the high school, a lot of students could probably become ASE certified mechanics.

Tuesday's drag races were the first of several projects in which students will directly apply what they have learned since school began. They have moved from learning basic safety measures with the tools to constructing intricate model cars, but adding design and construction was a whole new element, Knox said.

"Actually getting to build a car, see the wheels falling off, they get to see problems they'll face in real life."

One of those real-life microcosms is a scaled down wind tunnel Knox built using PVC pipes and clear, cylindrical plastic casing. Last week, the students used a fan and dry ice to test the aerodynamics of their initial designs, all as part of a lesson on drag, inertia, momentum and other forces.

But in the end, for the students it all comes back to the race.

And in Knox's sixth-period class, the Rios-Davis team takes out the Fordern-Glaser dragster again to move on to the school-wide bracket competition later this week.

This time the rest of the class is getting in on the fun.

"You're car got beat bad!" jeers one classmate. "Oh, the wheels fell off!" laughs another.

But Fordern and Glaser are both undeterred, immediately heading back to the machines to make adjustments.

Meanwhile, the winners are left to savor their moment, as Rios and Davis's teammate Markeeis Hopkins, a junior, takes his credit where it's due.

"The gold rims were designed by me," he says with a smile.