My Mousetrap Car

First for my mousetrap car, I knew I had to add traction to the wheels or else the whole car would barely move. My initial thought was to add some form of rubber to my wheels, however I was not able to find liquid rubber or rubber glue, so I had to improvise. I thought balloons would work best, but then of course there was the dilemma of getting them on to the CD's. Then it hit me- if I blew up the balloon and pressed the CD into the center while slowly releasing air from the balloon, eventually when the balloon deflated, it would cover the CD. I proved my theory right and repeated the process for all four wheels.

After that, I carefully sawed out my frame from a 2-by-4 chunk of craft wood. I made sure it was wood particle instead of wood because I knew real wood would be to heavy and take away from the car's performance.

The first thing I did to the infrastructure of the car was make it the exact width of the mousetrap, however make it very long, so it would add to the distance. The longer the frame, the longer the lever, the farther it goes.

For my lever I sawed out the bottom portion of a plastic hanger because I knew it would be flexible, which would allow me to wind the string up more. The tricky part was attaching my lever. I thought the best way to go about it would be through melting the hanger onto the snapping part of the mousetrap, and then let it cool to make sure it was secure. I heated the snapper on the opposite side of the lever because I knew it was metal which is a conductor meaning no matter which spot I heated, it would heat enough. I pressed the hanger arm onto the heated metal and watched as it melted. After about five minutes I was able to test the durability of the lever arm and it seemed sturdy enough to proceed.

Though I was heavily focused on distance, speed would be a huge factor as well. I made sure my car had an equal balance of speed
and distance by giving the axle a free, yet firm, rotation, in addition to adding a gear. I cut a cork in half and slid it onto the middle of the axle. Then I added a small piece of a toothpick to serve as an anchor. Next came the fishing line in which I tied a loop on the end, so I could hook the toothpick, however I made sure the fishing line would come off at the end so it wouldn't rewind in the opposite direction and tangle. My fellow classmates made this mistake and therefore took away both speed and distance for their cars. If I could have a redo I would definitely a more complex gear so it would have a much higher top speed. Instead of making the cork smaller, I should have made it cone shaped so it would be easier to unwind and therefore have less resistance resulting in higher velocity and distance.

I had carefully thought this out and had experience in building mousetrap cars, and knew mine was good enough for first place, however a stroke of bad luck hit and a balloon fell of a back wheel. If this had been a front wheel it wouldn't really have mattered because the back wheels are the ones that grip and pull forward, while the front wheels just spin and don't do any gripping. In fact, it may have been an even better idea to have just put balloons on the back wheels. Though this unfortunate event occurred to my mousetrap car, I feel it is still good enough to get first place. It has the speed and goes approximately fourteen and a half to fifteen meters. Hopefully it will be good enough!