DIY Mousetrap Cars Project

Hello, Viewer!

Our names are Sebastian Ramirez, Kevin Quevedo, and Ryan McClure and we want to introduce to you our project as an assignment for engineering-based Physics class at National Park College.

We will summarize the process the of how we came up with the idea of mousetrap cars, our plan of action and the steps we took for each car and why we decided to build 7 mousetrap cars!

Although building the mousetrap cars was a big part of the project, the documentation process is also a crucial part of this project because what is a good presentation without engaging videos, behind the scenes, and all the work we put into the project!

As we built the mousetrap cars, we tried to be very efficient with the supplies so here is what we used:

1.Rulers

2.Mouse trap

3.Cd’s

4.Metal rods

5.Pill bottle cap

6.1/8th inch plywood

7.Wood Glue

8.Tape

9.Zip-ties

10.String

11.Sandpaper

12.Washers

13.Laser "engraver" (Not Required)

So why mousetrap cars?

We first decided to build a control car with lengths that are normal than we built 6 different cars using different length body's, different length wheels, and different length rods to figure out with car has the fastest velocity.

As stated up above we have made it easier for you to understand our plan behind this project.

Week one is where it all begins where we search for an idea for an efficient mousetrap car!

We found one on Instructables.com where we thought it would be awesome to build cars and see with one could be the fastest with different variables.

Week 2 was drawing our sketch, props to Kevin and his amazing sketches, we felt ready to start building the control car. we bought our supplies at hobby lobby and got to work!

So now starts the building process after recognizing all the supplies, costs, and the reasoning behind this project.

Week three was all about building the control car, testing it to see if it drove straight, which it did! Down below is a video of the control car.

Since we got the control car to work, we started working on the different sized body car which was trimming down the ruler 6 inches and leaving the ruler 12 inches.

Coming down to last few days of week 4, we were planning on buying Vinyl's for our "large" wheels but that would be a lot of money so planning it out, there is this workshop at National Park College called "The Makerspace" where we decided to use a 1/8 of an inch of plywood for the wheels. We used a laser cutter to carve out a diameter of 7 3/16th inches as our wheels.

The track we used was a 20ft racetrack which gave us enough distance to time each car to see the time the each made it to the finish line.

We then used the equation Velocity = Distance / Time.

After Testing every car, we came to conclusion that the "Small wheels" car won due to its low weight, fast moving speed!

Any advice we have for you guys at home making mousetrap cars is when making the holes for the axels, make them line up with each other because unfortunately we didn't for much of the cars, making them curve A LOT just like the short body one down below.

Good luck on your own Mousetrap Car!!!