For this class, we were tasked with designing and creating a mousetrap car. We created our own designs after watching a few videos that gave us some tips and tricks to maximize the capabilities of our cars, and then drew and laid out four different designs. We picked the one that we thought was the best, and proceeded to build it ourselves. Then, once the cars were built, we tested them to see how fast and how far each of them would go.

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My car measured about 20 centimeters axel to axel, which was a little over what I originally had planned. I made the frame out of wood, and I had three wheels. One small one in the front, and two bigger ones in the back. I wanted the car to go fast (which is why I made it smaller than our maximum length of 30 centimeters axel to axel), but I also wanted some distance out of it, since that was what was going to be taken into account, anyways. I taped the ends of the wheels so there’d be less friction. As for how it performed…

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Well. It performed better than I expected, honestly. I thought it wasn’t going to pass, and I stressed myself out way more than I should’ve when I was building it. But it traveled 18 feet in 4.8 seconds, which was… well. Passing, at least. I think that I could’ve done a lot better, though. Maybe if I had made the wheels bigger, it could’ve gone further than what it did. And I would definitely use a different material for my lever. The skewers I used worked out eventually (I had to use two since the first one snapped right before my original test), but if I had used a stronger material, I think I could’ve done better.

At least the car worked. I can’t stop thinking about how much I stressed myself out building it.