Rat Trap Car. . . . . any suggestions?

Apply what you've learned in class.

When I had to do this they hadn't taught us anything in class the entire year. The teacher was just sorta like, "Here are some wheels, axles, and a mousetrap. Have fun!"

We wouldn't want to steal your thrill of discovery, ingenuity and spending a little time with the project.

I'm sure you can think of which one can create energy. ... ... ...

Dammit!

Good to know that these experiments are being done all around the world.
It's great that the creativity is encourged, and no sample is provided.
What I am most interested in is thge formula which makes this work.
I have assembled a mouse trap car already. It works okay.
Our tracher, like others will give no real guidelines as to how it is to be built or why.
I suspect that the formula will be shown to use later, but I would like it in advance to use in the report.
A part of all good building is good design.Perhaps that is what the teacher is teaching us here.
Nevertheless, could you please provide the formula which relates to this mouse trap car. I would love to do some really nice things such as predice how far the car would go, and the pressure of the mouse trap (etc).

Do yoiu know the formula/formulae?

Regards,
Poodas (from Australia)

Be quite a formula - whole buncha variables - some of which would be specific to the individual car and to the environment in which it was to operate.

Now, honestly, I haven't a clue about these critters, or "The Rules", but, if money and technology are open variables, a lot can be done. I figure the main considerations would be friction (of several types - some desired, some not), inertia, and directional stability. I would think there'd be some benefit to usin' high-precision ball bearin's, ultra-light-weight, but extremely sturdy, composite materials, a very high-traction "tire" mounted to a single very lightweight, relatively large-diameter drive wheel, with a pair of much smaller wheels, relative both to diameter and tread cross- section, mounted some fair distance behind and widely, equidistantly offset from the drive wheel. Atmospheric resistance could be minimized through the use of very narrow cross-section, extremely high-tensile strength frame, and mounting the propulsion unit - the trap mechanism - as close to, and as absolutely parallel to the ground as achieveable. Trimmin', shapin', and drillin' the trap's own wood base would yield both aerodynamic and inertial benefit, though structural integrety would of course be a factor; you don't want the puppy to snap when tensioned. Torque multiplication could be gained through a simple single-pulley arrangement on the drive axle, and torque moment could be adjusted through varying the length of the spring-driven swing arm and the diameter of the cabling used to impart torque to the drive axle. Interestin'- whole buncha tinker-and-tweak potential ... might just play with the idea myself. Who knows? Menbe my ideas are sound, mebbe not.

Now lessee here - I've got some realy small, thinwall kevlar tubin' left over from buildin' a little auditorium glider, some thin but rigid sheet plexiglass, lotsa monofilament fishin' line, plenty of other stuff that might be useful close to as-is or with a little acid ethchin' and/or machinin' ... oh, yeah ... and some super glue and some duct tape.

Should we be watching for you on the news, timber?

Might wanna keep an eye on the emergency rooms :wink:

I was thinking more along the lines of "Channel 5 News reporting: an unexpected entry in today's rat-trap competition .... "

My biggest problem making a rat-trap car was that I made the arm to long and the rat-trap didn't have enough power to pull it anymore... that made me sad