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Victory at the The 2024 Mousetrap Race

Victory at the The 2024 Mousetrap Race

Tuesday, December 10, was not an average school day for the woodshop class, taught by Mr. Joe Marten. During fourth period, they gathered in the gym to put their skills of ingenuity to the test.

For the last month the woodshop class has been learning how to build the instrument of their success, the mousetrap car. This little car uses a mousetrap as its engine and CDs (or any other circular object) as wheels. It works by attaching a stick to the mousetrap bar and a string to the end of the stick that wraps around the back axle; essentially, when the mousetrap releases, it spins the back axle, turning the wheels and making the car go. While this may seem like a simple concept, it has a crazy amount of physics behind it, like how the size of wheels affects the speed of the car and how wheels with their mass balanced roll faster than wheels with their weight on the outside. Another piece to consider is the amount of torque being generated by the stick. A long stick has a lot of leverage and can have a longer string but can generate less torque than a small stick. In this way, building a mousetrap car is all about finding the Goldilocks zone where all the pieces work in the most efficient way possible.

The woodshop class held a race in the gym to see whose car could go the farthest. The rules of the race are simple: every ten feet, a piece of tape is put on the floor of the gym; these pieces of tape are used to approximate the distance that the car traveled; the car that goes the furthest wins. The champion of the 2024 mousetrap car race is the team of Cece Pearson (9) and Peyton Martin (9), with a mousetrap car that traveled 54 feet. This is a big accomplishment! Their car had a longer stick attached to the trap, giving them more leverage and a longer string, and duct tape on the wheels, giving them more traction on the slippery gym floor. The woodshop class had a great time designing, building, and racing their cars, and we can’t wait to see what they will come up with next year.