Post Race Reflection:

The results conducted from race day were as follows:

            Best distance - 22.2 meters, a new school record! (1st place)

            Drag time - 5:53 seconds. (5th place)

           

1. How would you modify your car design if you had the opportunity? If I could modify anything no our current design, I would cut out a notch in the mouse trap (side closest to the axle) to reduce friction on the string.  
2. What might you do differently if you could build a new car? I was quite impressed with our design of mousetrap car. If I had the choice, I would probably stick to the same design, just use bigger wheels. Another thing that I would consider is lighter materials. Example: aluminum axle instead of brass. The only thing that I could not make lighter would be the chassis. If I made the chassis any lighter, the mousetrap would spin around the axle when set off.
3. What could be tweaked to make your car perform better? One thing that we could have done to improve the performance of our mousetrap car would be to use bigger wheels to increase the final drive, or maybe a stronger string as our previous string broke.

Video's & Photo's from test day: 

 

Mousetrap Vehicle Test Day

These are the results we conducted on our mousetrap vehicle test day:
Does it work? Yes! The vehicle performed very well, even better than most of us expected!
Does it operate consistently? Yes, the vehicle was ran down the downstairs hallway and hit the end wall after every test.
Does it withstant repeated use? Yes, after several uses, the vehicle withstood it's same state as when we started.
Does it meet all design criteria? Yes, nothing was modified or tweaked.
Are risks minimized in design? Yes, the way that the trap is set, you just have to let go of the wheels, and it goes. This minimizes the risk of getting your finger caught in the trap.
Is it easily operated? To a point. The only difficult part is setting the trap, or putting the string through the axle.

Performance:
Did it run in a straight line? Not exactly, the vehicle always wanted to curve to the right after about the 20 meter mark. But it consistently curves to the right so we know how to set it to get the maximum distance out of it.
Distance traveled? 26-28 meters.

my spring break.

During this spring break, my dad, four other friends and I went to Whitefish, Montana to go snowboarding. After twelve straight hours of driving we arrived at the mountain. It never really hit me until now, how much physics I used while I was snowboarding. One example of physics I used was carving. To carve, you have to apply force towards your toe and heel edge to cut into the snow, allowing you to turn. Another example in which physics was very important was gaging speed for jumps, especially when there is a fifty or sixty foot gap between the take-off and landing and as much as ten or twelve feet in the air. If you don't have enough speed, you will hit the knuckle; jump too far, flat. Either one is not a good idea, this is why getting the right approach speed and take-off is important.

Third Post.

Today, we spent most of the class commenting on others pages, and learned how to moderate comments that were left on our blogs.

Second Post.

Today we added gadgets, world maps, fish etc. We became followers of our fellow classmates and visited their pages.

First Post.

Today was the first time I was introduced to Blogger. We had to create a blog, change templates, fonts, background colors, and organized our pages!