Ben East

Yesterday I drove on down to the Toots Town School. This is what I saw.

I saw a gang of girls feeling high on spring, heckling somebody for sitting in a tree: “K-I-S-S-I-N-G….” I saw a bunch of cars lined up with parents running the engines waiting for their kids, eyes on their phones and windows rolled up despite the beautiful early spring, ready to go once the bell signaled the end. The end of after-school activities.

The spring-like sunshine didn’t interest me and the girl gang didn’t interest me and I took no interest in the parents in their cars. It’s another car I came to see, one belonging to a thirteen year-old inside the Toots Town School, still hard at work two hours after class let out, dedicated to his science.

The car runs on clean energy and won’t cause any early spring afternoons, with its elastic propulsion and braking mechanism that stops the vehicle on a tight margin.

The last time they ran this vehicle in competition, it stopped within six point seven centimeters of their target eight meters away. I don’t know exactly how you say it, but to a non-scientist like me it seems the vehicle covered more than 99% of the ground it was meant to cover. It stopped in under a percentage point of its destination.

I guess somebody could measure the proportionality of this wheeled vehicle against the wheeled vehicles lined up outside, and how accurately those large, engine-running things can stop and why that makes the roving gangs of girls safer because of it. But those cars are operated by adult human beings with brains and hands and feet that manipulate levers and buttons and other mechanisms in real time to reach this level of precision.

I just feel more inspired by the adolescent mind and hands that developed this clean-energy contraption that stops at a pre-set distance without hurting anyone’s feelings for sitting in a tree or crushing any bones or damaging the walls should it veer off course, a thing made from good old-fashioned rubber bands, butterfly clips, and childhood dreams.

There’s another thing. These scientists have figured out how to make the vehicle run an arc, do more than just go straight, including teaching this old fool with a liberal arts degree fancy mathematical concepts.

The last time they built this car, the scientists ran it straight along the course to reach 99.2 percent accuracy. This time, the goal is to have the vehicle run between two off-center cans, mid-way along the course, the cans defining a space barely the width of the vehicle itself.

Since they may need the car to arc left or arc right, they’ve developed a system that allows micro adjustments once they know the precise distance in the competition rules, maybe an eight meter run, a twelve meter run, or anything in between.

These two scientists, barely teens, have thought all this through, and designed the car, and built it with a combination of objects using their own blueprints, a 3-D printer, hardware store visits, hot glue, super glue, tape, wire, screws, clips, ball-bearings, and threaded rods. A nifty dowel and flag at the front give it a whimsical air, but even that playful touch serves a purpose, triggering a timer. Because, of course, there are points for speed.

Somewhere else inside the Toots Town School a child navigates a clarinet lesson, Winnie the Pooh notes reaching us rolling and nostalgic, neither weepy nor merry but quaint and delightful and timeless.

Outside in the beautiful early spring, two hours after the end of after-school hours, others are gathering for track and field, throwing and running and jumping and laughing. A roving gang of girls is singing about so-and-so and someone named Luke, sitting in a tree. Parents wait in cars thumbing their phones and running their engines and waiting for the end, but some might have noticed that the end is already here.

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