Mousetrap Car

In our construction of the mousetrap car, we discovered that Newton's first, second, and third laws were present in the car. Newton's first law that states, "Every object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force." In this case, the outside force was the friction of the tape-covered wheels on the ground. If the car had been like the hovercraft, it would have gone on forever. Newton's second law that states, "A=f/m" was important because of the variable of mass. If we had made the car too heavy, the force of friction would be too great for the car to move. Another force present was the force of the spring being released and propelling the car forward. Lastly, Newton's third law states that, "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction", is in effect because when the wheels push back on the ground, the ground also pushes the wheels forward. Something that can be hard to avoid was the possibility of centripetal force, but luckily Ella and I were able to create our car without that factor.
In our car, the wheels relied the most on friction. They needed it to move forwards, but it was easy to create too much friction. We found this during our first few trials because we realized that the tape on the front wheels was restricting the potential the car had to move forward. Friction is a good thing, but not in excess.
We chose blank CDs to be our wheels and I am glad that we did because the bigger the wheels are, the larger torque there is due to its diameter. However, the big wheels created a larger rotational inertia which means that the wheels were less likely to want to spin. The CDs  also had a large tangential velocity because of their large diameter and had a small rotational velocity because of the same reason.
In our recent unit, we learned about the difference between potential and kinetic energy and the mousetrap car was an easy example to see where they differ. Because kinetic energy is the movement of energy, it is not present until the string is pulled back and causes the car to move forward. Before that happens, the car does have energy, but it is potential. However, the second that the lever moves backwards, the energy transitions from potential to kinetic.
In the car, we cannot calculate the work that the spring does because it is perpendicular to the axel. In result, we cannot calculate the potential or kinetic energy because all three values would be equal to each other.


Reflection:
Our final design remained fairly similar to the original except we had to shorten the lever arm to allow a larger force. This was one of our problems, and also we had problems with the binding of string. It took us a few days to figure out the best way for it to be wrapped around the axel, but we figured it out. To make the car faster, I would use a heavier base, probably a plank of wood. We used a form of plastic cardboard, and it was too flimsy to be able to travel a significant distance. If I were to do this project again, I would make sure to have my materials on time and be more familiar with the construction of the car so I would be comfortable making serious changes if needed.

Speed: 0.62 m/s, last place.