The Pros And Cons Of The Thick Dry Wheels

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 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.

The boat sails forward into a weighted ball that has gravitational potential energy. The boat passes its momentum to the weighted ball at the top of a ramp. The ball falls down onto one end of a catapult. Once the weighted ball falls down onto one side of the catapult, the other side with a non weighted ball is driven up launches the ball up into a tube. The ball travels through the short tube, and passes its momentum to another ball at the top of a ramp. The ball has gravitational potential energy, and it falls down the ramp losing that energy turning it into kinetic energy. That ball hits a peg on a wheel. This wheel has four pegs on it, and one of them has a smaller peg perpendicular to the original peg. The wheel is turned driving the peg with the smaller peg up and into a block chain. The peg transfers its energy into the first block, and the first block transfers its energy into the next and so on. The final block hits a pin which is inside a slot. A balloon is positioned behind the pin, so once the block hits it, the pin is driven forward into the balloon. The pin pokes a hole in the side of the balloon releasing the air inside. The balloon is

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 aim of the experiment is to examine how the acceleration of the car differs when the angle of inclination of the ramp is amplified and to record and analyse findings.

Many of my earliest memories revolve around cars. As a child I can remember wandering around classic car shows, riding around up north in my family’s old work truck, and sitting in the back seat on countless road trips watching the miles of unknown road stretch to the horizon. Every time I place my hands on a steering wheel, even today, I still rekindle a fascination with anything that has four wheels and an engine. This interest encompasses everything from the mechanics of an internal combustion engine to the rich history of the American automobile. For this reason, I was euphoric when my family purchased a 1957 Chevy. Since this new hobby was introduced into my life, I have spent many long nights in the garage working to bring the car back to its original glory. In the past few years, working on this car has enriched my life in countless ways.

For example, when the car had 3 weights on it and weighed 1,457.9 grams, the average acceleration was 0.4116 m/s². When the car did not have any weights on it and weighed 653.7 grams, the average acceleration was 0.8771 m/s², which is more than double the acceleration of the car had 3 weights on it. When an extra 804.2 grams of weight was added to the car, the acceleration decreased by 0.4655 m/s². The evidence provided by the experiment proves that the more mass the object has, the more the acceleration will decrease, showing the direct relation between both mass and acceleration.

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.

The car, being above the ground, has gravitational potential energy. Which, when placed on the ramp, transforms into kinetic energy. This kinetic energy pushes the car down the ramp, towards the ground and the momentum carries the car forward. The wheels allow it to gain more distance, as using wheels is the most effective way of transporting something. Having only 3 groups of wheels reduces friction compared to having 4 groups of wheels.

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

The background research had talked about different types and sizes of wheel and the distance in can cover in a certain amount of time.

When mass is added to the propeller car the average speed and acceleration(a vehicle's capacity to gain speed within a short time) begins to decrease because of the amount of gravity and friction acting upon the object. All the iterations done were within 500 centimeters of distance and different amounts of weight were added to the car each trial. The mass increased while the speed decreased. When we had 0 grams placed on our vehicle it traveled at an average of 4.56 seconds, when 50 grams were added to the vehicle it slowed down having a average of 5.57 seconds, on the last trial 100 grams were added on the vehicle it took 5.73 seconds to cross the finish line. The way I graphed those data points was by putting the average time to travel 5m(s)

* The relevance of this experiment is similar to understanding a real airplane. Paper airplane models are derived from an actual plane these days. The design of an airplane has so much to do with distance, hang time, speed, and many other factors. Understanding the models I have chosen to make help me