High school offers class on go-cart racing

We’ve all heard stories about colleges offering questionable courses for class credit: Frisbee golf, a sociological study of Lady Gaga and even a lecture series on surviving the zombie apocalypse.

But the Manatee School for the Arts high school is giving them a run for their money, offering a course on “the Physics of Motorsports.”

More specifically, as local ABC affiliate WWSB reports, it’s a class that has students going out for a sessions of go-cart riding. And it's reportedly the only class of its kind in the country.

"All our high achieving math students, 8, 9 and 10th grades have been rewarded for their achievement with a day at the track," Physics of Motorsports instructor Frederick Hillier tells the station.

The course includes weekly trips to the local Anderson Race Park, which Hillier says will help motivate the students to further their physics studies.

"The physics program launches you in a great way into science but also into the motorsports path to where, if you want to be, you know, an auto engineer or even a go-cart engineer, it gets you a great start," senior and MSA Racing Team Crew Chief Lauren Hall told the station.

But yes, crunching those numbers and successfully completing the go-cart class fulfills a Florida state requirement for chemistry of physics.

“They'll collect the data, they'll go back to school in the next class, and they'll calculate what the g-force was of their deceleration," Hillier said.