Can We Get A Badge for a Pine Car Derby?

This is one of those posts brought about by seeing the same basic question posted once again on Facebok groups for Girl Scout Leaders.  The advent of the new Automotive badges this year once again  caused someone to ask "Can we get a badge for a Pinewood Derby?"

While "Pinewood Derby" is a trademarked Scouts BSA term, you can buy generic build your own race car kits where the body of the car is made from soft pine, much like that of the BSA model.  

First, to decide if Girl Scouts can get a badge for such an activity,   you have to decide what a "Pinewood Derby" is for your troop. The classic BSA version is that boys (and now girls too) obtain a kit that includes a shaped block of wood, four wheels and and axles.  They further shape (if desired) the block of wood, paint it, assemble it and, if their dads (and this is one project that dads tend to supervise more than moms, on average) are smart or have familiarity with the process, add weights to the cars.  The cars are then raced on an inclined track.  

So, which GSUSA badges might work into a race of this type?  My goal is to stick as closely as possible to the GSUSA activities and focus for the badges.  

Brownie Race Car Design Challenge:  This badge was originally designed by Goldiblox and was originally written to require the use of their products, which are lego-like.  The current VTK plans call for using craft supplies, wooden wheels and boxes to design and build a car and then a track and finally to race the cars.   Because it is an engineering badge, girls are given the opportunity to test and improve their design.  The plans in VTK call for wooden wheels and using a box as the body.  I see no reason that putting together a pine car kit couldn't qualify, especially if you talk about ways to differentiate cars or allow the girls to use knives to shape the cars or to decorate/weigh the cars down with clay.  In other words, I don't think that giving each girl a kit, having her build the car and then racing it on a local Cub Scout pack's track would fulfill all the requirements of the badge, but I think you could work such a project into the badge. 

Daisy Model Car Design Challenge:  This was originally a Goldiblox badge as well and involves building the same type of car as the Brownies build.  Daisies test their cars on various surfaces to learn the effects of friction.  As with the Brownies, I think assembling a pine car would meet some of the requirements for the badge but other things would need to be done, particularly the experiments with friction.  

Automotive Design:  This new badge available to Daisies, Brownies and Juniors has girls drawing a vehicle designed to meet certain needs identified in VTK and then sculpting it out of modeling foam.  The badge focuses on learning the parts of a vehicle,  identifying design criteria and creating a vehicle with those criteria.  I don't think a pine car derby would fit with this badge as the criteria  to have certain features would not really be possible for these cars, and if you did add say a big back end to carry things, you'll slow the car down.  I suppose you could brainstorm criteria that would make the car go faster and then get everyone to incorporate those criteria, but I think doing that is really trying to put a square peg in a round hole. 

Automotive Engineering:  In this new badge, girls look at design criteria and then use the design engineering  process to develop criteria for a vehicle, draw a sketch of it, create a prototype out of boxes and other craft supplies and then test the prototype to improve it.  The focus is on the process, not on the actual vehicle, which, if it makes it out of the meeting room, will hit the trash soon thereafter. Girls work in teams.  I don't see derby cars fitting this badge.

Automotive Manufacturing:  This is a new badge this year and is available to Daisies, Brownies and Juniors. While the talking points vary, the activities are largely similar. I think this could fit, and honestly I didn't think of it that way until after I started writing this post.  As a matter of fact, I'll admit I started writing this post with the idea of saying that the GSUSA badges were not a good fit for a "Pinewood Derby".  This is basically a badge about using an assembly line for mass production.  The VTK plans call for using the assembly line to put together cars made from toilet paper rolls, straws, toothpicks, cardboard and sponges.  I daresay that if such cars move more than a few inches, they won't survive more than a few minutes.  A leader could pull apart the wooden car kits, separate them into component parts and use those parts rather than the junk on the assembly line.  However, if this is done correctly, you will end up with a stack of identical cars and anything to make your car different would have to be done later. 

At least at my house when I was a kid, Pinewood Derby was a parent/child project with Dad supplying the engineering know-how. Girl Scouts on the other hand, is about girls doing things for themselves, so as I experienced Pinewood Derby 40 some-odd years ago, it really wasn't a Girl Scout-like project.  However, I know it is a lot of fun for the kids and I'm not knocking parent-child projects, but Girl Scout badges are not awarded for parent-child projects.  

That being said, I'm not really a fan of the cardboard box and/or toilet paper tube cars the GS badges recommend.  They clearly won't last, if they even move and I don't think there is much less engineering involved in assembling a pine car than in reverse engineering a box car the leader made as an example.  If the girls made the cars individually as in the Race Car or Model Car badge or used an assembly line to put the cars together and then individualized them, I think building and racing them could be part of a badge, but I do not believe that building a pine car from a kit and racing on an inclined track made by someone else meets all the requirements for any Girl Scout Badge.  What do you think?  

Image by Stephen Dumas from Pixabay