Fast Fact:
CART race teams employ up to 50 people, spend between $10 and $15 million U.S. per season, and travel to some 17 different race locations.
Objective:
The students will explore geography based on where CART teams drive. They will also practice measuring distances.
In the Film:
A PPG CART team travels all around the world to race. In the film you see several different locations of races. The students see that race team members include drivers, engineers, fabricators and crew. Team costs include salaries, travel, lodging, rental cars and meals during the season and throughout the off-season, when development and testing is conducted.
Materials:
A world atlas, a world map, a globe, a pencil, a ruler, paper.
To Do:
Using the map, have the students circle and label each city that an Indy team travels to. Ask them to use the sample racing schedule to measure and calculate, with the help of the maps scale, how far the race teams travel from race to race, starting in Homestead, Florida. Have them repeat the exercise on the globe. Instruct them to compare the appearance of the distance on the map to the appearance on the globe. (Use a string and the globes scale to measure distances.)
Whats Going On?
The true distances are those on the globe. Maps distort distances in order to flatten the surface of the globe for paper reproduction. The exact method of calculating distances on a map depends on the type of projection the map uses to represent the three-dimensional globe.
Taking It Further:
1. Have the students design their own schedule of races with one race in each city. They should try to find the schedule that makes the total distance travelled between cities as short as possible.
2. Have them design a schedule of races so that they leave their home city (number one on the race schedule) and visit each city only once. Then they must go back to their home city. Finding the shortest possible path is called the travelling salesman problem.
3. Ask the students to imagine that they manage a racing team. Have them do research on the costs involved in operating it. How much does it cost to build an Indy car? How much should they spend on research and development? They should give a detailed breakdown of the expenses.