Mousetrap Car Project
Hnatyshin & Nazerally 1
Mousetrap Car Project
The ‘Mouse-tang’
Asif Nazerally, Marc Hnatyshin
Mr. Boivin
SPH 3UE, Grade 11 University Physics, Rockland District High School
November 16th, 2012
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Introduction
The purpose of this project is to design, construct and evaluate a unique vehicle
powered solely by the energy of a mousetrap, supplied by the instructor. A secondary goal of
the mousetrap car was to reach a distance of at least 10m. The materials used to build the
mouse trap car were four unused, blank CDs, electrical tape (for our test tries), wooden sticks
as axels and chassis to support it, a mousetrap, a coat
hanger, straws, masking tape, hockey tape, and lastly,
Melba toast.
A form of energy being measured in this project is
kinetic energy, the energy of motion (Nave, 2000). Kinetic
energy is based on two factors: mass and speed, and is
measured in Joules (see Figure 1) (Anonymous, Kinetic
Figure 1. An example of kinetic
energy (University of Waikato,
2010).
Energy, 1999) (Nazerally, 2012). Kinetic energy will be
measured for the mousetrap car with the mass and the
speed of its trials.
Newton’s 1st law states that an object in motion will stay in motion until an unbalanced
force acts upon it. This can be applied to the mousetrap car, because it will remain in motion
until the force of friction overcomes the force applied by the mousetrap.
Newton’s 2nd law states that the direction of the acceleration is the same as the
direction of the net force. This can be applied to the mousetrap car because it will accelerate in
the direction of where the force will be aimed towards.
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Newton’s 3rd law states every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction. This can be
applied to the mousetrap car because the mousetrap car does not break through the floor due
to the fact that the force of gravity and the force of the normal cancel each other out
(Anonymous, Newton's law of motion, 2012).
The purpose project is to design, construct and evaluate a mousetrap car powered only
by the force on a mousetrap.
Design Strategy & Diagrams and Images
Axle
Wheel
Mousetrap
Melba Toast
Body
Figure 1. 1st design of mousetrap
car.
This was our preliminary design (see Figure 1). It was made out of, wooden sticks for the
body and axle, Melba toast to hold the body together, CD’s for the wheels, the mousetrap, and
tape. We decided that we’d go for the sled design, to keep the extra weight of more wheels off
of our ‘Mouse-tang’. We then realized that it would work much better with wheels, since they
provide more momentum.
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Figure 2. The broken record.
We were initially planning on putting on two records as the back wheels, but
unfortunately, Marc broke one of the records (see Figure 2), forcing us to move to a tricycle
design.
Axle
Wheel (CD)
Mousetrap
Wheel
(Record)
Figure 3. 2nd design of mousetrap
car.
This was our 2nd design (see Figure 3). Made with the materials of our 1st design, and
additionally the straws on the axles so that we could tape together the car while keeping the
wheels capable of moving, the record as the sole wheel in the back, and much more tape. We
went with a V-shape in the back to compensate for the large record wheel. The design looked
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great on paper, but unfortunately the chassis of our car was not strong enough to keep the
wheel standing by itself, so we needed to go a different route.
Wheel
(All CD’s)
Coat
hanger
Figure 4. 3rd and final design of
mousetrap car.
This was the 3rd and final design, which produced terrific results. We changed the back
record wheel into two spread out CD wheels, attached the coat hanger lever and the fishing line
as string and we used a lot more tape. The crucial parts of the design were the length of the
lever, allowing us to use much more fishing line to make the ‘Mouse-tang’ go further. We also
included a small peg on the back axle so that the fishing line could hook on to it, to ensure grip.
Results & Calculations
Conclusions
Questions
1. What are the two types of friction that affect the performance of your vehicle?
The two types of friction would be kinetic and static friction.
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2. What problems related to friction did you encounter and how did you solve them?
We thought that taping the wheels would provide better traction on the floor and help
Mouse-tang travel further. However, it ended up slowing the Mouse-tang down, so we
removed the tape and it yielded good results.
3. What factors did you take into account to decide the number of wheel you chose in
your design?
We started with a three-wheel design believing that fewer wheels would mean less friction.
However after further inspection we discovered that the car was unstable and fell down easily.
We then added an extra wheel which provided proper stability with the perfect amount of
friction.
4. What kind of wheels did you use in each axle? What is the effect of using large or
small wheels?
In the beginning we tried having one large wheel (a record) in the back of our car because
we believed that a large wheel would carry momentum after being pulled. It also would be
pulled slower due to its weight causing it to go slower. A larger wheel would have a larger
surface of area causing the rotations per minute to be lower. A rotation of a larger wheel would
go farther than one of a smaller wheel. We believed that if we could get a larger wheel to spin
the same amount of times of a smaller wheel our car would go farther. In the end we had to
settle for smaller wheels due to instability of our large, single wheel. The advantage of small
wheels is that small wheels make the car go faster because it has more rotations per minute.
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5. Explain how Newton’s first, second and third laws apply to the performance of your
vehicle.
Newton’s 1st Law applies to the mousetrap car because the mousetrap car remains in uniform
motion until the friction overcomes the applied force.
Newton’s 2nd Law applies to the mousetrap car because the mousetrap car will accelerate in the
direction that the wheels are pulling it (the object will travel in the same direction of the force).
Newton’s 3rd Law applies to the mousetrap car because the
mousetrap car
6. Discuss the effect of the length of the lever arm in the pulling force of your vehicle.
We made a large lever so that the car would move slowly, but for a longer period of time. The
longer the lever is, the more string could be spooled up, as well as the length of how far the
lever will go is increased greatly.
7. How is the balance of a wheel, around its center, related to the vehicle’s
performance?
If the axle was not in the center, the wheels would not roll evenly, that’s how it’s related.
8. How does the distribution of weight of the vehicle affect the traction of the wheels?
It affects the traction because if there is more weight on one end of the axle compared to the
other those wheels will have more traction.
9. Discuss the major problems encountered in the performance of your vehicle and what
did you do to solve them.
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In our first design, we had two front wheels (CD’s) and one wheel (record) in the back, and
we thought it would be golden. But unfortunately the body of our car was not strong enough to
hold the wheel up, making it wobbly and unstable. So we decided to switch to the classic fourwheel car, all of them being CD’s, and the outcome was great.
Another issue we had when testing our mousetrap car was that it would roll for a second,
and stop. But we then realized that, when spooling up the fishing line, it had to be done a
certain way (spread out along the axle) to roll properly, and when it came time for the actual
trials, it rolled very well.
Selected References
Appendix
Journal #1 – November 7
We met at Marc’s house to discuss our mousetrap car plans, where we got down to
business, immediately. We watched many videos to further our thoughts of how to make this
mousetrap car, and we decided on the name: the ‘Mouse-tang’.
Journal #2 – November 8
We had a work period in class to work on our mousetrap car, so we brought in our
materials and got down to business, immediately. We started by receiving two records,
courtesy of Miss Monica Hendrix-Sicard, when Marc succeeded in destroying one of them,
because he had the urge to see if it would bounce, chucking it to the floor. After we decided
that we could not use that wheel, we chose to put the one record in the back, and two CD
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wheels in the front. That day we got many ideas from other groups, and we cut off half on the
mousetrap so that the lever would go further.
Journal #3 – November 8
We met up after school the same day to work on our ‘Mouse-tang’ at Marc’s house,
since it was due the next day. We got down to business, immediately, slapping together a
golden mousetrap car with a record as a wheel in the back, two CD wheels in the front, and
Melba toast, found on Marc’s dinner table, to hold the whole car together. We realized that it
didn’t work, since the sticks we used couldn’t hold up the record, so we re-routed to a great
solution: two CD wheels in the back, as well as two CD wheels in the front.
Journal #4 – November 9
We met at up school extremely early in the morning around eight o’clock or so to put
the finishing touches onto our ‘Mouse-tang’, and we got down to business, immediately. We
finished putting on the two back wheels, and brought our beauty of a mousetrap car to the
test. It was a lot of fun building the ‘Mouse-tang’, and we hope she’s up for the test.
Journal #5 – November 9
After our first run, we yielded great results, but unfortunately for us, Thomas and
Adam’s car didn’t. Thomas decided to sneak over to our defenseless ‘Mouse-tang’, and just as
no one was looking, he stomped on our poor baby ‘Mouse-tang’, breaking its wheel off. Marc
took the used and abused mousetrap car home and fixed it up, with great efficiency.