The mousetrap car

Hello everyone.

 

It has been a while since I have had time to write, at least, here in the journal.  I thought I’d give a sort of progress report on one class I’m taking.  It is called ENGR 120, A.K.A. Intro to Engineering.

 

This should be a great class, a load of fun.  And it would be, I think, if the adjunct professor weren’t a bit of a flake.  So far we have designed a process for making peanut-butter-and-cracker-sandwiches.  Our process fail miserably.  Then we made a composite for construction.  My group has attempted to use bamboo and glue… we won’t know the results until they are tested for strength, which is scheduled just before the holidays this month.

 

Currently we are attempting to build a mouse-trap-car.  You take a mouse trap, and use only the energy of the spring when the trap is set, to propel a car.  This can be done for speed or distance.  Our test is for distance.

 

 

So I built a car frame, one of the team built this drum attachment for the mouse trap.  I robbed the axels and wheels off a 1 dollar toy car.  Dollar stores are good.  That is also where I found the huge package of tongue depressor sized popsicle sticks to make the frame out of.  So here is the final product.

 

Current status:  My best run went just over 12 ft.

 

If you get a chance to build one of these, weight

seems to be an issue.  Go for light!  A popular choice

is CD’s for wheels.  I’d have done the same but could

not find anything to make a hub out of.  The axle’s are only

0.1” diam, and the center hole in a CD is 0.6” diam.  That is

a big difference.