UNL professor features physics of NASCAR in new book

Tapping into the wave of making science more interesting for students, University of Nebraska-Lincoln physicist Diandra Leslie-Pelecky became a NASCAR fanatic by accident.

On Feb. 14, Dutton will release a new NASCAR-licensed book, "The Physics of NASCAR: How to Make Steel + Gas + Rubber = Speed," that strips away the paint scheme and aura of today's high-performance stock car and addresses the engineering and physics of how its built, tested and raced both for speed and safety.

Leslie-Pelecky, an associate professor of physics and astronomy, said she had no interest in automobile racing until one night, channel-surfing past the Food Network, she happened upon a NASCAR race and saw a group of cars turning a corner. When one car slid and hit the wall while the others maintained their track integrity, she took notice. "There were no mechanical problems, no tires blown," said Leslie-Pelecky. "Why did it happen?" The question literally kept her up that night, so she dove into all things NASCAR to understand the science behind the sport. A task she expected to take 20 minutes on the Web ended up turning into a book.

Since then, she's been a denizen at pit row, befriending crew chiefs and mechanics, and discovering that most race teams have one or more Ph.D.s on their staff. She's even driven a car, at Texas Motor Speedway, in a "slightly toned-down" stock car -- only 600 horsepower. "Watching a race on TV, you have no idea how different the cars are -- they're designed to go left, so if you want to go straight, you have to steer right. The kinetic energy of the cars varies with the square of the speed, so if you double the speed, it's not twice as energetic, it's four times as energetic."

That and other unknown facts about NASCAR -- the second highest-rated regular-season sport on TV in the U.S. -- riddle Leslie-Pelecky's book, which she said she hopes will spark a surge of interest in science and math among the legions of fans -- especially children who have grown up among NASCAR devotees.

She said her involvement in the National Science Foundation-funded program Project Fulcrum -- which puts graduate students in K-12 classrooms to help teach science -- made her realize the more fun and accessible the subject, the more enthusiastic the students will be and the more they will understand. She said she hopes to inspire them to crack open a book to figure out how aerodynamics, physiology and chemistry affect their favorite drivers.

"If you look at how many things can change on a car or in a race, there are more than a million combinations," said Leslie-Pelecky. "It's impossible to test all possible combinations, so teams use sophisticated computer algorithms to optimize their testing procedures."

In her book, Leslie-Pelecky describes how NASCAR legend Junior Johnson mastered the concept of aerodynamics to overtake other cars with the drafting technique. Johnson watched as a leading racer's rear window popped out because of the vacuum created by his car following very closely behind. Johnson, even though he had a weaker motor, ended up winning the race because of his understanding of science.

Leslie-Pelecky's book is the latest effort by a UNL physicists to popularize science by describing the physics of sports. The tradition started with the late Ted Jorgensen's "Physics of Golf" in 1993 and continued with Tim Gay's " Football Physics" in 2004.

One of Leslie-Pelecky's best resources turned out to be right across campus in UNL engineer Dean Sicking and the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility, which played a major role in developing the "soft walls" that help dissipate energy in case of a crash. Sicking and his team have saved countless drivers from serious injury.

Leslie-Pelecky visited the NASCAR Research and Development Center, which has made many safety enhancements to the sport, and a number of race teams. She spent a lot of time at the track with the No. 19 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team of Elliott Sadler.

"Elliott really understands physics," she says. "He uses different words than I would use to describe what happens, but he has a gut-level understanding of physics that most physicists never develop." The No. 19 had a challenging season last year, so she is especially looking forward to meeting up with the crew again in Daytona this year to see how they'll fare this year. The book release date (Feb. 14) is the day of the Gatorade Duel at Daytona International Speedway. The official opening of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is the Daytona 500 Feb. 17.

Leslie-Pelecky has been invited to give a Family Science Day presentation at the annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this week in Boston. In addition to the AAAS event, she will conduct book-tour and publicity events while continuing her research and other work this semester at UNL. A new academic opportunity is taking her to the University of Texas at Dallas, where she'll join her husband in May.

More about the science of motorsports can be found at www.stockcarscience.com.

CONTACTS: Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, Assoc. Professor, Physics and Astronomy, (402) 472-9178;

Kelly Bartling, University Communications, (402) 472-2059