Mouse Trap Car Research

The purpose of this laboratory experiment is to construct a mousetrap vehicle. The vehicle needed to go travel five meters. My partner and I build a mousetrap car that obtain a two-axle vehicle with four CDs making the produce optimum acceleration and travel.

We worked well, but the car stopped halfway while I was testing the car with 150g weights on the track because the weights were blocking the wheels. I solved this issue by adjusting the weights and the car never stopped while I was testing on the track. (The major problem we faced this week). We decided to put 100g weights on the car because our energy was high when I tested the car on the

We were given groups to design and make a mousetrap powered car that will roll as far as possible. This will be measured and be put into a graph. We will make three modifications to our mousetrap car over the course of the experiment. We have a variety of different materials, including plastic, wooden wheels and a dowel, screws, mousetrap, blue tack and a piece of string. Forces were acting in a negative way and a positive way on the car. Gravity was pulling the car down to the ground. Uplift was pushing up upon the car against gravity. Drag was also known as friction, holding back the car while it was moving. Thrust was in the cars favour, pushing forward against the force drag. There were also many forms of energy being used and being wasted like heat and sound energy. Potential energy was stored in the mousetrap, propelling itself forward. Kinetic energy was also demonstrated when the car started to roll.

When the mousetrap car moves down the track, the speed of the mousetrap car decreases, therefore my hypothesis was supported. At 1 second, the mousetrap car was traveling at a speed of 3.2 m/s. At 2 seconds, the mousetrap car was traveling at a speed of 2.35 m/s. At 3 seconds, the mousetrap car was traveling at a speed of 1.53 m/s. At 4 seconds, the mousetrap car was moving at a speed of 1.2 m/s. At 5 seconds, the mousetrap car was traveling at a speed of .98m/s. “A car will eventually come to a stop if just allowed to roll as the friction between the road surface and the wheels causes friction that causes the vehicle to stop,”(Examples of Rolling Friction). The evidence supports the claim because the wheels of the mousetrap car are moving

The mousetrap car, Versace, was tested multiple times to test how far it went. When constructing the car, the group members had different ideas, but all ideas were put into the construction of the car. The car was tested with CDs as wheels and then paper plates as wheels. Each time, when testing the car, the axle gearing had different measurements and distances. The group had finally gotten the best distance on the car. The group was also able to find the kinetic energy of the boat. Then the data from the tests were used to find the efficiency of the car. Overall, the car did very well.

One of the most fun projects this year, building mousetrap racers. With this project, however, challenges arose. Attaching the wheels to the axles, for example, presented a major problem. The dowel used was .75 inch and was too large to fit in the center of the DVD. Using washers and bolts was thought of, but they proved to be too heavy. In the end, bottle caps and screws worked to secure the wheels to the axles. The bottle caps were wide enough that when fitted against the DVD they wouldn't go through the hole. Another challenge was placing the mouse trap as far from the drive axle as possible without impeding the car’s movement. So an arm extension on the mousetrap was not constructed so upon snapping it would not hit the front axle.

In order for natural selection to take effect with coat coloration of rock pocket mice that live on New Mexico’s Valley of Fire’s lava flows, conditions were met that are necessary and sufficient for evolutionary change. These conditions relate with variation. With variation, the coats of the mice must be heritable, and have a distinctive mortality (Study Week 4). The variation occurs here with the two different colours of fur; dark and light. These colours came from slightly different genes over time that controls their pigment. This mutation has heritability because the dark mice coat has enough of an advantage for staying alive that their offspring had more offspring and so on; eventually leading to natural selection weeding out the mice

Another force that was acting on the car was friction, friction was acting on the car because the piece of wood was very rough and had little ridges on it which was rubbing on the car which would cause it to slow down a little bit. The direction that the forces were going was pretty much everywhere, gravity was going down and friction was going forwards and backwards. The car did not work well with the friction because the friction would cause the car to somewhat lose control and go off the side of the ramp, the car did not work well with the gravity either because the gravity is what cause the car to fall and crack the egg. Some ways that we could minimize those forces is by making wheels for the car and making the bottom of the car smooth to reduce the amount of friction, we can't really reduce the gravity in the car but one thing that we could do for that is make the car really light but with a lot of padding for the egg. The reason I say we could make it really light is so that when gravity is acting on the car the car won't fall as fast and would somewhat glide down to the floor with a soft landing for the

In this case we need to overcome the friction force from the axles, and tires to be able to power the vehicle by mousetraps far enough. There is a coefficient of friction between the axle and the bearing where the axle sits in the bearings and does not spin together so that is where most of the friction is created. The front wheels currently are hard rubber, and the rear wheels are currently cutting disks which are a hard material and very skinny, creating a very little amount of friction. The total force of friction would need to be less than the force of the mousetraps on the axle throughout the traps angular travel. Methods that were used to reduce friction consists of using lubrication on the axles to make it easier to spin, use skinnier wheels to reduce friction from the ground, and making the vehicle lighter with a simpler design. (See APPENDIX 1 for detailed

The final car uses a combination of a mousetrap and rubber bands. The mousetrap, attached to the top of the car by tape, pulls a fishing line which is wrapped around the front axle. The fishing line is attached to the mousetrap at an arm that was added to the mousetrap. The arm is comprised of two long axles attached to the hammer of the mousetrap which allows the fishing line to pull the car's axle for a farther distance. The long chassis of the car allows for the arm to be as long as it is. If the arm was much longer than the body of the car, the spring force of the mousetrap and the weight distribution of the arm would cause the car to flip. However, by distributing the weight of the arm across the body of the car, the car was able to maintain

In conclusion, my 1st car was a bust traveling 9.8 cm/s, my 2nd car did pretty well traveling 35.86 cm/s, but wasn’t built very well and lastly my 3rd car was the most successful, traveling 50.16 cm/s. Over the time that I worked on this project my skills really did advance. In the beginning, I was clueless and now, with the materials, I could make another car in a day. I learned a lot from trial and error.

a) When the lever is winded up and all set for release the Mousetrap Car (MTP) has potential energy that will be used to accelerate the car. 2) When the lever is released the string is pulled from its ready position on the axle causing the level to pull the string causing a pulling force on the string by the lever. 3) When the lever is released and the string is pulled the back wheels of the MTC are beginning to move because of the potential energy that is now kinetic energy which causes rolling friction between the Mousetrap Cars wheels and the ground. 4) The MTC is now accelerating at a certain speed from it's point with the string being pulled by the lever until the spring is snapped, which then causes the MTC to

Final Conclusion Entry The purpose of my mousetrap car design was to explore how far my car would travel with the laws of motion, friction, potential energy, and kinetic energy acting upon the car. I designed the car to be light and long, with the car being 45 centimeters in length, having a lever arm of 24 centimeters, and a mass of 82.3 grams, because the car would use more string to rotate the axle when the car is longer and less force would be needed to propel the car with less mass. I used 4 wheels congruent to each other with a diameter of 7.5 centimeters. I used rubber bands fasteners to align the car.

As a group our building process was very complicated because we had so many different ideas and opinions, considering that there was three of us. One part of the building process that we spent the most time consuming was the wheels. As a group had very different ideas but, we decided to have four wheels on the mousetrap car. Our reasoning for this was that more wheels on the car would help keep it rolling for longer. I also decided that we should use thin and light wheels on each axle. We ended up using CD’s as our wheels because they were able to go a longer distance due to less friction. Using heavy wheels would have added unneeded weight or friction to slow our mousetrap car down. So, due to Newton’s laws and outside forces such as friction

The toy has uses two main energies, Kinetic and Potential. Potential energy is made by the pulling back of the car. Kinetic is made when after the car is