i have 2 build a mouse trap and or rubber band car any suggestions on how 2 make it, make it fast ect.?

Question

it can be either
A) a rubber band car
B) a mousetrap car
C) which i like better a combo (a mouse trap and rubber band car)

Answer 1

you can go to the store or you can read books on it or ask a t3eacher

Answer 2

Build a car with 2 axles, and then either:

(1) Tie the rubber band arounf a peg at the front of the car and wind it up around the rear axle by rolling it backwards, or

(2) Mount the mousetrap so that when tripped the little snapper moves forward. Wrap a piece of strig around the rear axle so that when the mousetrap is tripped, the snapper bar moves forward pulling the string and makes the rear axle spin.

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Adding a small pulley type of thing to the rear axle will let you adjust the accelleration and speed of the cars. Smaller pulley = less accelleration but faster final speed.

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If the mopusetrap car can PUSH against something, that might be a better way to do it -- the moustrap just pushes itself off from a starting block, carrying th car with it. But it might be tricky to make this work right without just flipping the car over.

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Here are some websites about making moustrap cars (just type "Mousetrap cars" into the Yahoo! search box top find links like these), some of which came form other Y!A people who answered similar questions in the past:

Answer 3

Define your goal. Is it to make it the fastest or make it roll the furtherest?

This was done in my freshmen engineering at Univ of South Ala.
They were all supposed to go for distance.
The best distance winner was a build that used about four approx 12" styrofoam wheels to make it light. I think they had also cut out the inner part of the wheel to give spokes to also lighten the load.

They had extended the bar on the trap to like 18" and then added strong string to spin the wheel axle.

To extend the length of the trap bar, I would use a light but sturdy material that didn't collapse with the pulling force. Maybe like a coathanger wire or the top of a fishing rod. Check you local hardware and hobby stores.

The styrofoam wheel car had a very slow trap-snap time and drove very slowly. You could see it unwind the axle string. But I think it went 23 ft which was about double anyone else's distance. The others mostly used up the trap's potential (snap) energy in the first foot of the release, so they relied on the car cruising as far as possible.

If you are going to build for speed, I would probably get something like Pinewood Derby wheels in hobby shops or Boy Scouts ( The little 1" hard plastic wheels). But caution, though we were going for distance, the fastest of the lot only went about 4 to 6 ft or so. It did a hard turn which didn't count on the distance (S final - S initial). So BE SURE THE CAR TRAVELS STRAIGHT.

If you can get your own mouse traps, get a heavy duty one. (Engineering speak: A high spring (K) constant.) the Professor gave out mouse traps he purchased, to keep, at least, the trap part even; That way, it would depend more on the design and skill of each group.
Good Luck.

Answer 4

placed both water bottles on the bottom. placed the rubber band round them and placed the mouse seize on the best of them and look after it lower than that rubber band it is going to glide on water!