1. Mousetrap Car Project
By: Jeremiah Oghafua

2. Defining a Problem
The problem that I was trying to solve in this project was how to design a mousetrap car out of common household items and how to fashion a mousetrap car that can go at least 5 feet.

3. Brainstorming
Before I started the project, I tried to imagine possible mousetrap car structures and designs.

4. Researching and Generating Ideas
As I brainstormed, there were several mousetrap car designs that I looked over. In my research, I also looked at tutorials on how to build certain mousetrap cars. These tutorials served as a reference to my design. I used sites such as these for inspiration:

5. Identifying Criteria and Specifying Constraints
The criteria of the mousetrap car required that the mousetrap car that I built must be capable of moving at least 5 feet. The constraints that I was working under was that the materials I could use were:
6 pipe cleaners
2 boards of binder cardboard
4 CD discs
1 Mousetrap car
Yarn
A little bit of hot glue
6 rubber bands
A small paintbrush
2 balloons
8 barbecue cabob sticks

6. Exploring Possibilities
I explored my possibilities by sketching out preliminary designs in my sketchbook. I drew a total of 3 preliminary sketches. In one design, I considered the board of the mousetrap car being made of wood and the hooks for the axle being metal hooks. In another design, I considered not using a long handle to unwind the string on the mousetrap car. Instead, I thought about making handle of the trap itself function as the unwinding part of the string.

7. Selecting an Approach
After looking over the preliminary sketches, I made a final sketch in my engineering journal and decided to follow that design. The design required that the mousetrap car should be constructed without a handle, the CDs function as wheels and they each have tires. Also the design included that board/base of the vehicle being fashioned like that of a go-cart.

8. Developing a Design Proposal
For the design setup I used the final
sketch from my engineering journal.

9. Making a Model or Prototype
When I constructed the prototype/model of the actual vehicle, I instead had a trial and error session seeing which areas of the mousetrap car needed adjustment.
Making a Model or Prototype

10. Refine the Design
The trial and error session that I had for the vehicle model revealed that the mousetrap car could not propel itself forward by the trap’s handle alone. The model/trial and error also revealed that the two of the wheels did not require tires. Therefore I only added two balloons as tires for two of the wheels.

11. Create it
After refinement of the prototype, I built the mousetrap car. I cut out a piece of cardboard from an old binder to serve as the base of the vehicle. I twisted 4 pipe cleaners around the board to act as the axle hooks. I cut and taped together 2 pairs of 4 barbeque cabob sticks to form the axles. The wheels were made from the CDs.
The rubber bands were used to hold the wheels around the axles. A paint brush was attached to the mouse trap car handle to act as the unwinding lever. String was attached to the paint brush and the string was tied around the back axle.

12. Communicate Results
After testing the mousetrap car, the results were satisfactory. The mousetrap car was able to travel around 7 to 13 feet at a speed of about 1.42ft/s.
Distance Table
Trial 1
13 ft
Trial 2
8ft
Trial 3
10ft
Speed Tables(Speed=Distance/Time)
Distance
Time
Calculated Speed
Trial 1
5 ft
3.33 s
1.5 ft/s
Trial 2
4 s
1.25 ft/s
Trial 3
3.36 s
Average Speed: approximately 1.42 ft/s

13. Distance
Time
Time: 10 ft- 5 ft
Calculated Speed
Trial 1
10 ft
6.67 s
6.67s-3.33s=3.33s
Trial 2
8 s
8s-4s= 4s
Trial 3
6.7 s
6.7s-3.36s=3.34s
Average Time 10ft-5ft: 4.9s Average Speed 10ft-5ft: est ft/s
Acceleration of 5ft=0.13ft/s
Acceleration of 10ft=0.1ft/s