There are four cars entered into a pinewood derby race. in how many different orders can they cross the finish line, assuming there are no ties?

This is a problem of fundamental counting principle. In a sequence of events, the total possible number of ways all events can performed is the product of the possible number of ways each individual event can be performed. So here there is one car in each place so there 4 possible cars to get the 1st place, 3 possible car for the 2nd place, 2 possible cars for 3rd place and 1 for the 4th place. The 4x3x2x1 = 24 different order