Post 4 - ITT - Mousetrap Car

Mouse Trap Car.

This project was also in a group of two. We had design and build a car or vehicle powered only by the mouse trap. We could bring in any materials we wanted, except things like motors or more power. We could not modify the mousetrap except for fitting. 

Some technological concepts involved were, friction, force, mass and torque. These will effect how ell our mousetrap car will work. For friction, you want enough friction to get all the force from the mousetrap through the wheels and convert it into movement, but not too much that it slows the car down. We wanted enough torque to get the car moving fast, but not too much the wheels span.

My learning goals for this project were, to be able to utilize the power from the mouse trap to make the car move fast and efficiently, to learn how to make a light weight but sturdy car, and to make precise cuts in the wood and to build the car well.

This is our finished project. we made it mainly out of wood and dowel rods. for the wheels we used old DVDs, which we put electrical tape on the outer edge for extra grip. The axles were made from dowel rod, which had wood glued on either side to keep them in place. We also put tape on between the hole in the body and the wheel,. so that the axle stays straight but can still spin freely.

There was a lot of positive feedback for our car, it's best distance was 25.5 feet. It was designed well, it was sturdy, light and the wheels span very well and pretty straight. I am happy with the results, especially as we were a few days behind because we had a major redesign a few days in.

If i were to redesign the mousetrap car, i would make the main chassis longer, so the pulling pole could pull a further distance. I would also make the back wheels larger than the front wheels, because this would decrease acceleration, but increase top speed.

The main technological resources of this project were the mousetrap itself, the pole and the axles. The mousetrap provided the power which was transferred to the back axle by the pole that was attached by string. These came together to move our car.

I think we had two biggest challenges in this project. The first was to actually get the car to move, as our first design didn't move at all. The second biggest challenge was to make the body lightweight, yet sturdy.

We overcame our first problem by redesigning our whole project, we lightened the body, made it shorter, changed the wheels to CD's and lengthened the pulling pole. These changes enabled our car to travel almost 26 feet. The way we over came our second challenge was buy using thin but strong wood for the main chassis, and only out thin wood on top for the mousetrap to sit on. This made the body strong and light s the car could go as far as it could.