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Mouse Trap Car

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What is a Mouse Trap Car

A mouse trap car is a simple, yet ingenious contraption that is designed to look like and move like a car. The only difference is that this vehicle is a small scale car with it's propulsion relying only on a mouse trap's spring.

When the potential energy of the snapper's spring is released, it is converted to kinetic energy which will be the crucial driving force of the whole mouse trap car. Depending on the design, position and size of the car and its parts, the amount of energy released from the snapper's spring may be enough to launch the vehicle in an incredible speed or allow it to travel at a great distance.

With the proper application of the fundamental theories of Physics, a mousetrap's design may be manipulated for it to reach it's maximum acceleration and speed as well as the maximum distance it can travel.

This simple vehicle, usually made of the usual household materials, have fascinated a lot of hobbyists and enthusiasts because of the infinite design possibilities you can apply with every mousetrap car.

Mouse trap Car in Action

If you want to see how mouse trap cars look like and how they work, check out the video. This will give you and idea of what to build.

Simple Mouse Trap Car goes 138 feet: by 1donagin | video info

310 ratings | 402,911 views

automatically generated by YouTube

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Modified Mouse trap car

Improving your car.

There are a lot of ways to improve on your mouse trap car. By adjusting the size or positions of certain parts of your vehicle, or by using the same parts made of different materials, the performance of your mouse trap car may vary significantly.

What you must first consider when modifying your car is to determine whether you are designing a car for speed or a car that's supposed to travel long distances. Depending on the purpose or category of the car, that's when you modify the parts so that it could perform both efficiently and effectively.

There are just a few parts that need to be adjusted when modifying the vehicle. Of course, the most obvious and probably the most common part that's being adjusted are the drive wheels. Bigger drive wheels could make your car travel further but by using bigger wheel, you will sacrifice speed. By using smaller wheels on the other hand, you could make your car move faster but it won't be able to travel far.

Another way of making the car move faster would be using lighter materials. Obviously, a car with less weight would be less susceptible to gravity and will be able to accelerate faster and may reach its top speed easier. On the other hand, a heavier mousetrap car will travel longer. According to Newton's law of inertia, a moving object with a higher mass will require a larger external force to stop it as compared to a moving object with a mall mass.

This law explains that if the car has a bigger mass, a large amount of external force is required to stop it. The only external forces that would stop the car in this case is would be gravity and liquid friction. In this case, the car (with a larger mass) would be able to travel further than a lighter car.

Of course, there are more factors that could be considered to either increase the speed or the mileage of the mousetrap car. What is important in improving your mousetrap car is that you have a creative imagination and a better understanding of the fundamental laws of Physics. With the combination of these two characteristics, you should be able to come up with a high performance modification on your mousetrap car.

Mouse Trap Car Kit

What you need to get started on your Car

If you want to make your own mouse trap car but you don't have the right equipment or parts to make them, then we suggest that you take a look at these items available at Amazon.Com.