Mouse trap car
03-19-2005, 10:18 PM
#1
Senior Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Twentynine Palms,
CA
Posts: 122
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Mouse trap car
Anyone ever make one of these Mouse trap cars? They look kind of fun for the kids to help make. Here is a link to kits you can buy, but they don't seem hard at all to make, just a mouse trap, some string, some balsa and a few wheels.
http://www.docfizzix.com/
http://www.docfizzix.com/
03-19-2005, 10:53 PM
#2
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Posts: 2,093
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
RE: Mouse trap car
We did those as an engineering project in 8th grade ( Oh my, that was 21 years ago!)
The best design I ever saw, the guy used 2 old 33 1/3 rpm records as drive wheels. He let the mouse trap pull on the axle, via an elastic band, and turned the records. It was very slow, but it ran all the way across the Gymnasium, twice, on one wind! Mine only went 60 feet
]
The best design I ever saw, the guy used 2 old 33 1/3 rpm records as drive wheels. He let the mouse trap pull on the axle, via an elastic band, and turned the records. It was very slow, but it ran all the way across the Gymnasium, twice, on one wind! Mine only went 60 feet![
]
03-20-2005, 11:23 AM
#4
Senior Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Twentynine Palms,
CA
Posts: 122
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
RE: Mouse trap car
The string attaches to the drive axle and is wind up backwards from direction of travel. From what I've read, the sting is put onto a little peg so when the string is all the way unwound, it can release from the axle and let the car keep going.
03-20-2005, 11:08 PM
#5
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Winnipeg,
MB, CANADA
Posts: 273
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
RE: Mouse trap car
Cool. So if you made the part of the axel where the string goes around thicker or thinner, it would change the speed and acceleration?
06-27-2006, 06:29 PM
#8
Junior Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: , AR
Posts: 3
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
RE: Mouse trap car
Haha...i forgot about those projects from high school....how about CO2 dragsters? has anyone ever made one of those? they'll cross a gym floor diagonally in less than 3 seconds...
06-27-2006, 07:02 PM
#9
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: San Diego,
CA
Posts: 11,943
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
RE: Mouse trap car
ORIGINAL: tone0420
Haha...i forgot about those projects from high school....how about CO2 dragsters? has anyone ever made one of those? they'll cross a gym floor diagonally in less than 3 seconds...
Haha...i forgot about those projects from high school....how about CO2 dragsters? has anyone ever made one of those? they'll cross a gym floor diagonally in less than 3 seconds...
]. My record was 1.056, and if you saw my car you would have laughed the night away. The chassis was just a flat piece of balsa, so simple it wasn't even funny. I used straws for axles and applied putty around the straws, I then removed the straws and I had the holes for my axles. I used the supplied axles and wheels and that was it. Everybody had said the car would suck, turned out it ended up the best! It was a sleeper! 
