The Hunt Is On

And we're off! Our mousetrap car is going to be one of the best. Not only is it going to be one of the fastest cars, but it’s also going to be one of the most eco friendly cars. We originally just visited the supplies table in the back of the classroom when we thought our car should be like everyone else’s. We instead decided to get a little more creative. We started asking our hall mates and our classmates for old materials rather than buying new supplies. We rummaged through the recycling bins at the end of our halls until we found the materials that we needed. The only materials not listed that we might use, once we get through the technical plans, are markers or crayons. We will use these to paint on our racing stripes and probably some flames too. When creating our design we decided to make the car as light as we possibly could. This way instead of the car just rolling across the floor, it will glide, barely touching the floor, as if it was flying. We used the wheels we thought would be the smoothest and the thinnest in order to reduce friction. This all sounds great now, but the only thing that worries us is that when it actually comes time to construct our car we might have to alter our genius blueprints because we find that something doesn’t actually work the way we thought it would.

Blueprint of our car.
 The snap of the mousetrap with pull the string resulting in the spinning of the back axel to power the car. 

These 4 rolls of tape will be the wheels to our car. Their surface is smooth so it will create less friction against the track and cause our car to go faster.

This is the mousetrap that we have to build the car around. When the trap is set off it will pull the string attached to the axel.

The cardboard will be cut into circles and go into the center portion of the wheels. The axels will be going through the cardboard, as it is to hold it in place.

These are the 2 dowels used as the axels. They will go through the popsicle sticks and have wheels attached on either end. String will be tied around the back axel to make it spin.

These 2 popsicle sticks will be glued to the side of the mousetrap and act as the sides to the car. The axels will go through them.

This is the string used to tie around and spin the axel.

Happy Racing!
-Izzy, Hannah, & Mamadou