1.29.2016
Physics
Mr. Yav
Devon Buenrostro
Kyle Macauley
Ricky Pearce
Executive Summary:
We are going to build a car, carrying an egg, powered by a mousetrap in order to demonstrate the conservation of energy. Our car will be put to the test against another car in a jousting battle. Our goal is to build a car that can accelerate quickly and use our knowledge of impulse to protect our egg and win the battle. Our intended design will be similar to this sketch.
Table of Contents:
Design Problem and Objectives
Detailed Design Documentation
Test Plans
Bill of Materials
Task Chart
Safety and Ethical Consideration
References
Design Problem and Objectives:
We have been tasked with creating an original car that can keep an egg safe during a collision with another car. The engine of the car must be a standard sized mousetrap and the car must be made from scratch. The first part of the project is to design a car to accelerate over a minimum of one and a half meters of flat ground at the fastest rate attainable. The second phase is to go head-to-head with another car. The cars will be placed on opposite ramps and crash into each other at the bottom. The goal is to keep the egg safe throughout the process.
There are multiple obstacles in the way of creating a perfect car. For instance, it is optimal to have a light car to increase acceleration but it is helpful to have a heavier car to deliver more force during the collision. A happy medium must be met in order to successfully accomplish both goals. This means designs must be met in the middle to optimize both speed and weight.
Another additional challenge will be protecting the egg from collision. There will not be very much room on the car due to the condensed size to increase acceleration. We must use our space efficiency and design a crash system that will reduce the impact on the egg.
In terms of winning the battle, we are going to design a car with a low center of gravity and possibly an extension off the front to destroy the opposing car. We cannot extend the length of the car too long or it will not make it down the ramp safely because of the difference in the angles of the surface.
Detailed Design Documentation:
a.) The mouse car is able to move because of the spring in the mousetrap. The spring is the power source for the entire car. It brings the hammer of the mousetrap forward and releases energy in the process. In our design, a pencil is connected to the hammer. Connected to the pencil is a string, with one side wrapped around an axle, which spins to make the wheels spin. The energy comes from the work done by the spring. The Fspring multiplied by the distance the hammer travels results in the amount of work done. In order to create more acceleration, our design incorporates a pencil. The pencil is used to create a sixty-degree angle to maximize the force of the mousetrap. The larger the force, the faster the acceleration should be. Another method to increase acceleration is use smaller wheels. The wheels will have more rotations and the car will move quicker. We will acquire small wheels with this in mind. It is also important to have a small axle to wheel ratio. This is important because the as the axle spins, the wheel will follow sync. With wheels spinning fast, our car will need added friction to preform the best possible. We decided using balloons as added friction would be a good idea because real tires are made of rubber and balloons have a similar texture. The body of our car will not be light but it will not be overly heavy. This is for two reasons. We want to have the best acceleration possible but we also need our egg to survive the impact. Our goal is to destroy the other egg and we need some weight in our car to increase the momentum. We are also going to create a low plow extension to knock the other car out of the way. It should change the direction of the opposing car or destroy their egg. To protect our egg, we will create a sequence of padding to decrease the impact, similar to airbags. Our objective is to slow the force over as long amount of time as possible.
b.) In total we are estimating our cost to be around thirty dollars.
c.) Human factors will be a problem when creating the car. No matter how well we calculate or design the car, there will be some error in creating it. We can minimize these errors by testing the car many times and correcting various things.
Test Plans:
We will test the mousetrap the most. We will use various angles to determine which one works the best for our design. Sixty-degrees is said to be the optimal mark but we will test various angles to prove this. We will also test different size wheels and decide how big or small we want to go. Lastly, we will test different weights of the car. We will need to find a happy medium in which the car can accelerate and also deliver a big force when it collides with another car.
Bill of Materials:
Mousetrap - $5
Balloons - $2
Fishing Line 2$
Pencil - Free
Two medium wheels - $6
Two small wheels - $3
Chopsticks - Free
Wood - $12
Task Chart:
Design Report (All) 1/29
- sections 1-3 (Ricky)
- sections 4-5 (Kyle)
- sections 6-10 (Devon)
Acquire materials (Ricky) 1/29
Build car (Kyle & Devon) 1/31
Run tests (All) 2/3
Preform in class (All) 2/5
Safety and Ethical Considerations:
We will create our car from scratch without copying anyone’s idea. We will make sure to do our own work and be safe when creating the car.
References:
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