Toy Car Analysis

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.

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.

The building process of the cars starts out with a piece of wood, students need to cut a chunk out of the back to make room for the gears connecting the rear motor to the axle. You could choose with your team any design that

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 balloon powered race car will be powered by the balloon. The balloon will be blown into and the straw will be the source of the air going into the balloon and then pinched so there is no release of air, then release the air, measure the distance and speed of the car when air is released. This uses the three Newton laws and they are when an object is at rest it stays at rest and an object is in motion it stays in motion in a straight line at constant speed unless acted upon by an unbalanced force, the next is the acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and the force applied, the last is every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Ever since the beginning of the automobile industry in 1885 when the Motorwagen was invented with an internal-combustion engine, car design has radically changed over the course of history. Hundreds of small changes over a 150-year period have seen cars get faster, more fuel-efficient, and overall just look cooler. But how have cars changed so much? What are the physics behind the modern sleek designs you now see driving the streets as opposed to the vintage block-shaped designs you see at antique car shows?

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

As the angle of the ramp increase, the more kinetic energy was gained as the car was put in motion and increased its velocity. Whilst conducting our experiment, we did not encounter any problems or errors with our experiment or

The purpose of my mousetrap car design was to design a car that was both quick/traveled and creative. The design of my car was one main piece of basswood and having two thin pieces on the side of that. Each of those side pieces would have two whole in them (at the ends) so that I would be able to stick an axel through them and put wheels at then end. I used a total of four wheels on my car so that the whole thing was balanced. I used lego wheels and lego axles because I knew that because the axles fit perfectly in the wheels, that the wheels would be straight and move easily. My wheels had a lot of tread to them which helps them maintain a high degree of friction and it gives them a better grip to the floor.

This discussion brings up a very vivid memory that occurred almost two years ago. I had just purchased a childhood favorite, the yellow and red Cozy Coupe, for my one year old. Her excitement fueling mine, I carelessly tossed the instruction manual aside. I remembered thinking “How hard could it be?” I know what a car look like. Confidently, I began putting the Cozy Coupe together. Roof. Done. Steering wheel. Done. Door. Done. Wheels. Done! Satisfied with my accomplishment I lead my daughter to the Cozy Coupe and placed her in it. To my horror, the Cozy Coupe would only go in circle! I had placed two of the wheels on wrong (one swivel, one non-swivel). To make matter worst the wheels were held in placed to the axle with cap nuts. For those

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

Three design concepts are required, one of which will go to prototype stage and will be subjected to safety testing and strength tests. The kart material should have a high strength rating as the kart has to be able to withstand large impact forces along with large torsion forces.