2.
-In the picture above, the car that carter is holding is, in fact, the mousetrap car that won first place in our class. There are many different parts of the car that make this car move as it should.
-Aluminum Frame - used for the stability of car to not fall apart when moving.
-Mousetrap - The mousetrap is the "engine" of the car, making the lever arm move to propel the
car.
-Cork- The cork on the back axle of the car is used as our transmission. This part is where the string wraps around to spin the back wheels.
-Axles and Wheels - The axles and wheels are what makes the car's movement possible. As the cork spins the axle rotates with it which causes the wheels to spin with it as well.
-Metal Rod- The metal rod acted as the lever arm for our car. It reacted when the mousetrap sprang and pulled the rope that spun the cork which spun the wheels.
3.
4.
a.) Newton's First Law of Motion (An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.)
-In this experiment, Newton's first law played a very important role on the mousetrap car, especially when it came to speed and distance of the actual race. When the mousetrap car was started, it was at rest. Yet, there was a force that acted on it (Mousetrap) and it began to move. In a friction less environment the car would have kept going on forever. However with friction as the force acting against the wheels it stopped after a while.
Newton's Second Law of Motion (The acceleration of an object as produced by a net force is directly proportional to the magnitude of the net force, in the same direction as the net force, and inversely proportional to the mass of the object.)
- In this experiment, Newton's second law of motion played the important role of of making the force needed to propel the car forward. Knowing the car should be light. It would need less force to be moved by the mousetrap. This relates directly to this law because if the mass is less and the force is the same the acceleration is going to be greater.
Newton's Third Law of Motion (For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.)
- In this experiment, Newton's Third Law of motion was responsible for the movement of the car. When testing, we noticed that when the lever arm was released by the mousetrap, it moved the car forward. When the wheels started to spin they pushed the ground and the ground pushed them back, causing equal and opposite actions moving the car in the forward direction.
b.) There were two different types of friction that were present when the mousetrap car was moving. The first and obvious type of friction is rolling friction. Rolling friction occurs when an object rolls over another something with wheels or that is circular like a ball. When the mousetrap car was rolling the friction between the floor and the wheels occurred causing it slow down over a gradual time. The other type of friction that occurred was fluid friction. Fluid Friction occurs when a object moves through a fluid, meaning either a liquid or gas. In this case the lever arm was slowed down by the resistance of air to get to one point to the other. Some of the disadvantages we faced by friction was the friction between the wheels and the ground. With this friction present, it slowed down the speed of the car and it was not able to reach its full potential. We tried to solve this problem on a very minimal level by buying wheels that reduced the amount of friction as possible.
c.) The factors we took account of when deciding the wheel selection were which ones would make it go the fastest. We decided on small wheels because they would have less rotational velocity and make it easier to spin. We decided to choose wheels that decreased the effect of friction between the wheels and the ground. The back wheels were slightly larger than the front wheels. The reason small wheels are important is because they have to travel less distance to get the same rotation as larger wheels, causing it to move faster.
d.) The conservation of energy is defined as "a principle stating that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can be altered from one form to another."
When doing this experiment we realized that before the car was moving it had potential energy ( the energy possessed by a body by virtue of its position relative to others, stresses within itself, electric charge, and other factors.) because it was at rest. When the care began to speed up its potential energy transformed into kinetic energy (energy that a body possesses by virtue of being in motion.)
e.) Carter and I debated endlessly on how long the lever arm of our mouse trap car should have been. We debated on whether the lever arm should be longer or the same length as the mousetrap car. We finally decided that it should be the same length because it is doing the same amount of work and will make the car move faster if it is the same length compared to it being longer. Overall, for maximum speed, if the lever arm was as long or equal to the mousetrap car then it would pull it fastest. It needed to be something that would move as fast as the mousetrap released would move and not slow it down. This effected both the power and output force of our car.
f.) Rotational inertia played the role of how easy it would be to spin the wheels. The reason that wheels are used instead of balls is because that it is possible for it to reach inertial velocity faster. The reason that the wheels were small were because of rotational and tangential velocity. The smaller wheels took less time to make a full rotation compared to larger wheels which it means it could cover less distance in more time compared to larger wheels. Although if there were larger wheels on the car the tangential velocity would be different but the rotational velocity would be the same.
g.) The reason we cannot calculate the amount of work the spring does on the car is because we do not know the force of the mouse trap. As we know, work is equal to force X distance. When the mouse trap is sprung the lever arm travels over a known distance but we do not know what the force is. The reason we cannot calculate the amount of potential energy that was stored in the spring is because we do not know the mass of the mouse trap or the velocity in which it closes. Potential energy equals the change in kinetic energy therefor, if we do not know one we cannot figure out the other.
Reflection
a.) From the beginning of the project the original model had a longer lever arm that was needed. After completing multiple trial runs, the thing we needed was more speed. This is what prompted us to change. We decided to make the lever arm as long as the frame of the cart. Allowing the string to pull the transmission at faster rate, thus, allowing maximum speed.
b.) As the trails progressed a few of the problems we encountered were mechanical, meaning there was a flaw in the structure itself. The way we corrected these problems was making sure that the structure was study itself and was meant for the race.
c.) To make the car faster, I would decrease the wheel size allowing more rotational speed and less rotational inertia which would increase the velocity of the car.
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