To celebrate annual Take Your Child To Work Day, Ford engineers in the Ford Research and Innovation Center built a three-story Hot Wheels track to clobber the old nine-feet, nine-inches tall record loop. The loop on Ford’s three-story run-up track was over twelve feet high and successfully ran a Ford Mustang Hot Wheels car through the loop and off the other end.
The world record attempt was the brainchild of Ford dynamometer technician Matt West, who had built increasingly large Hot Wheels loops with his six-year-old son Blade at their home in Monroe, Michigan.
The attempt took place in the three-story atrium of the company’s Research and Innovation Center in Dearborn in support of Ford’s participation in national Take Your Child to Work Day.
“It started as part-fun, part-physics lesson with my son at home,” said West. “We built one in our playroom, and then built a five-foot-tall loop in our backyard. When people at Ford heard what we were up to, everyone thought it would be a great way to get young people excited about science and engineering by trying to break the world record on Take Your Child to Work Day.”
The current record of nine feet, nine inches tall was set in Ohio. West and his friends at Ford successfully made a Mustang Hot Wheels car complete a 12-foot, six-inch loop.
“On a track, a Hot Wheels car can only go so fast, so carrying the momentum of the vehicle through an entire loop is harder than you might think,” said West. “In a world where kids are inundated with TVs and tablets, I thought teaching my son with actual moving vehicle models would be so much more rewarding, and then it took on a life of its own.”
