Mousetrap Vehicle Recommendations

Things that Went Well
On our trap using Meccano went well. it made it easy to attach parts and take them off. Our distance was actually pretty good we just have to make sure we set the car off at the right angle to get our maximum distance. Our car wasn't that slow either.
Recommendations
Make sure to use light weigh materials and tires that have traction. It would be a good idea to have two sets of wheels. A larger set for distance and a smaller set for speed. Try to avoid friction on the axle. When setting to the trap make sure the string to wound up tight and is a strong string so it doesn't break. Make sure to test your car out many times to know exactly how it works. If it turns to the left start it off pointing a bit to the right.

Race Reflection and Competition Day

Competition

Our mousetrap cars average distance was 10 meters which was the distance you had to have to get full marks. Our vehicle weighed 462.3g which made it the heaviest car in the competition. Our car placed 5th in the distance trial. In the drag race we placed 6th with a time of 5.57 seconds.

Post Race Reflection

If were to modify my car design i would get a new record for the wheel because it was warped so it caused the wheel to wobble and turn the car.

If i were to build an all new car I would use lighter material and find wheels that were straight.

If we wanted to tweak our car to make it better we could have made a way for the string to stay tight and found a way to straighten out our wheels.

Waiting to be told to set off the trap. Watching our car race down the hallway

Mousetrap Car

Our mousetrap work very well when i first tried it at home but of course when it comes to test day our car was not working the same way. As you can see our vehicle is in need of some help. We need to make some changes in order to make our car go farther. Maybe getting it to go farther than 2 meters would be a good idea.
Our car was very effective at home but on test day it didn't really go far at all without a little push( pushing not allowed on test day). Our car didn't exactly go straight either but I think the reason for that was because the wheels were rubbing in spots.

Spring Break

On my spring break I didn't do very much. I mostly stayed around town but I did drive to Brandon a couple times. Drive has a lot to do with physics. Driving is to do with motion. I could have created a particle model of me driving. I could have also took pictures to create a motion diagram. I could find my displacement. A motion time graph could have also been used to show my trip. My spring break was pretty good but nothing special.

Posting

Today we got time to follow more blags and give feed back on their blogs. I went through the comments I had and changed some of my site around.

First Post

Today we changed settings and posted comments on classmates blogs. We were told to tell them something we liked about their blog and something that they could change about it to make it better. Yesterday we added gadgets and had time to change the design of our blog.