Mouse Trap Powered Vehicle
In this project students have to design and build a vehicle that transforms the kinetic energy of a mouse trap spring into linear motion of a car. In doing this project students are able to apply their knowledge of simple machines and mechanical advantage to design and build a vehicle that will compete in three competitions (speed, strength and accuracy). Students also learn and apply many physics concepts into design and construction of their vehicles, such as torque, energy, friction, rotational inertia, momentum, strength, center of mass, force and acceleration. This is a great hands on physics lesson and is wrapped up with students writing an engineering report defending and describing their design.
