Dear Diary,
In class on Tuesday, we ran a few more trials with our car and made various modifications.
The most successful thing was that the car was able to accelerate at a decent velocity in the several trials that we ran. We kept it in mind that we had to wind the string around the back axle without getting it tangled making sure it unwinds smoothly and to pull the mousetrap's snapper arm all the way back making sure that the spring has the most potential energy so in turn the car has the greatest kinetic energy during the run. We were going to capture the trial in a video, and then analyze the data to find its velocity, but ran into some complications.
The least successful thing was these complications: the mousetrap breaking off of the body, the shifting movement of the body on the axles, and the tangling of the string on the back axle. To tackle these problems, we first decided we should unwind and shorten the length of the string to avoid the tangling of it when we set the car. To address the shifting of the body on the axles, we wrapped duct tape around the dowels on the outside of the eye hooks, so that the body can no longer slide from side to side on the axles. This was wasting some of the energy that could go into making the car accelerate. Next, we will reattach the mousetrap to the body with a stronger adhesive, or use stronger cardboard or other material for the body itself.
We have a few modifications to address, but we feel that we are off to a great start!
