Perliminary Investigation

I think that some design components that will be critical for our mouse trap vehicle will be making the vehicle very lightweight because if the vehicle has to much weight it will slow down the vehicle. Also I would say that big wheels would help because in my research I found that bigger wheels help you get more distance.  

Speed and Acceleration Web Quest

1. Average speed is a measure of the distance traveled in a certain period of time. Instantaneous speed is is speed at a particular instant in time. Your speedometer shows your instantaneous speed.

2. Constant speed is traveling the same speed over a period of time. 300m

3.A vector quantity that is defined as the rate an object changes velocity. Average Acceleration = deltVelocity / Time = Vfinal - Vinitial / Time. m/s/s, km/h/s, and mi/h/s. 28m/s.

4. Slope = Velocity. As the steeper the slope the higher the velocity, if the slope is curved there is acceleration.

5. They are traveling at 3m/s in a negative direction. Velocity = Df - Di / Tf - Ti
They are traveling at 4m/s Velocity = Df - Di / Tf - Ti

6. The slope = the Acceleration. I the line is going up and to the right it is accelerating if it is going down and to the right it is decelerating.
A), D), H)

7. An object falling under the sole influence of gravity. 9.8m/s/s

8. The object is accelerating. the acceleration of an object on mars is 3.78m/s/s. a= deltaV/ deltat = Vf - Vi / tf - ti = 7.55m/s - 3.77m/s / 2.00s / 1.00s = 3.78m/s/s
       

Reflection

Things that went well for our mouse trap vehicle group were our group worked very well together and we had a lot of fun during the whole process. Other things that went well was our car preformed fairly well, we learned how to make a mousetrap vehicle, and how to troubleshoot any problems that arose in the process of making the vehicle.

Some recommendations I would make to future mouse trap racers are make sure you use wheels that are the right size for your vehicle, you may find out that bigger wheels get you more distance but make sure that your wheels are small enough that you mousetrap can move them easily. Other recommendations I would make are make sure every one knows what your plan is for the vehicle and what their spicific job is, this will help thing go much more smoothly.            

Post Race

December 12 was race day for our mouse trap vehicles. My team was the third group to go. On our first run our vehicle went 7. 64m we were hoping that it would go farther than this but we still had two more runs to try and get it to go farther. On our second run our vehicle went 7.45m we were hoping that it would go farther than this but we were happy that our vehicle had consistency. On our third run our vehicle went 9.85m this time we were happy about how far our vehicle was able to go (but this kinda blew our consistency out of the water).

                                                    Our Best Run!! 9.85m!! Video by Josh 

We were not able to finish all of the tests on December 12 so the last two vehicles and the drag race happened on December 13. In the drag race our vehicle was again going third and was up against the team who went fourth. Our vehicle was not built for speed and it was going up against a vehicle that was built for speed. So in short our vehicle got killed. 

Me setting up my vehicle for a run. Photo by Josh

If I could modify our mouse trap vehicle I would put on smaller wheels because when we set off the mouse trap it took a long time for the trap to get the wheels turning and if we had smaller wheels it wouldn't be as hard for the mouse trap to turn the wheels. I would also try and make the back wheels more stable so that they don't wobble and lose kinetic energy and this would also help keep the vehicle going straight.

 

Test Day

December 5th was Test Day. This was the day set aside for all the groups to test their mouse trap vehicles and make any modifications that they think they need. Our test day did not go quite according to this plan. On the morning of test day I was trying to put on a wheel that kept falling off and accidentally separated the mouse trap from the chassis. All was not lost though through a quick fix-up using some masking tape we were able to attach the mouse trap well enough for the vehicle to work.  After we passed the test to see if we were able to go on and participate in the competition we used carpenters glue to permanently attach the mouse trap to the chassis. 

I would say that our vehicle is fairly effective and reliable every time we set it off it will move. Before I broke the vehicle it was not as durable as it is now that we have used a better glue to hold everything together. Our vehicle is safe and very easy to operate.

Our vehicle always fades to the right and it gets fairly annoying because I do not know why it is fading to that side. Hopefully after more tests and more careful examination of the vehicle we will be able to figure out the problem and find ways to fix it.

On test day our vehicle went about 6 meters, because we had to let the glue set we were not able to test our vehicle any more than doing the fist test so we have nothing to compare.

I think that a modification that we could make to our vehicle is to put smaller wheels on the back axle because the records are so big that the mouse trap is haveing a hard time getting enough power to actully get them to turn.         

Paper Town Competition

Yesterday my physic's class had a paper tower competition. In this competition we were put in groups and had to design a tower made of paper that could hold 2000 grams.

The part of the building process that I found most rewarding was the designing of the tower because in this part of the process my group and I could bounce ideas off of each other and figure out what we thought was the idea that would produce the best result.      

My group's ideas for a tower matched our completed tower almost exactly other than a few minor additions like the belt support put around the base level of the tower.

L to R Brady, Nick, and Jon.  Photo by: Mr. Bertram

I don't think that I would have taken any design elements from any of the other groups but there are a couple of changes that I would make if we did this project again. I would make sure that my tower was straight all the way up this would help disperse the weight evenly throughout the tower. Another change that I would make is to make sure the tower is attached together so that it doesn't have any room to move.

Thanks for reading.

My First Post

In physics the last few days we have been learning about how to set up a blog and to think before we post. Today we made our first posts and had to go to everyone's blog and make a comment.