The Mouse Trap car project!? *shivers*

[streak101]

in my middle school we go to SECME compatitions. For those of you who don't know SECME is a competition that schools go to and compete in certain categories. vTheres Bridge Building, Egg Drop(don't even ask), Bottle Rockets, school banners, web design, and the dreaded Mouse Trap car!


Basically, we're supposed to construct a car to go 2500 mm or cm or something and it has to be as short and as light as possible out of a mouse trap. The mouse trap itself cannot be changed in anyway to make it lighter(no holes punched in no burning off edges and no cutting of the wood.) We can only add stuff onto it to make it go the distance.

In other words we add some wheels to it, tie a string to the snapper and to the back axle, and let it fly. The tricky part is adding gears and axles to make it faster.

So my question: Do you know any online store i can get gears or axles that are minute in size? 70% of my Geometry class grade for this semester is depending on it.

[AdventWings]

That's a tricky one. For something like that, I would go to a hobby shop and buy a motorized snap-together race car kit. It's called Mini-4WD cars, I believe, and made by various Japanese and Chinese companies. Originals are by Tamiya and other cheap ones have a "twin diamond" logo and another one with a "twin globe" logo.

The model is pretty small and light-weight, so I think you should not have much trouble retrofitting its gears and axels onto the mouse trap. The model has an aspect ratio of 1:32.

I don't know if it's still sold in the States, but it's getting pretty outdated in Thailand. I still have 3 working motorized models, though, all dated back to the year 2002. :D

EDIT: Methinks the contest wants it to go 250 millimeters. 2500 millimeters = 2-and-a-half kilometer. 2500 centimeters = 25 kilometers. That's a heck lot for a mouse trap-powered car!

EDIT2: Ugh. I think I was badly out of my mind back when I wrote this up. Ignore the distance measurement here, folks! >_o;

Thanks for the corrections, Letho.

[Letho]

Actually, 2500 millimeters is 2,5 meters. There are 10 millimeters in a centimeter and 100 centimeters in a meter. Come on people, the metric system, the rest of the world is using it. :P

I have no ideas for the project though; we don't have such things around here.

[AdventWings]

Ugh. My country uses the metric system but I ended up confusing the decimal places myself. Somebody, please shoot me. ;)

Correction on myself:

2500 millimeters = 250 centimeters = 2.5 meters.

Hmm... That's not all that far. I've made a rubber band car that could go farther than that before.

[Storm Veritas]

The small wheels and gears you can get at any store that does model airplanes - a hobby shop, if you will.

The key to this experiment is in controlling and vectorizing the energy. Merely snapping the trap won't do shit; you need to use that kinetic energy to drive the cart forward. I would rig an elastic to a frame that the car leaves behind; that can be used as a "push-off". Weigh it down, so the elastic you tie to the snap-trap "pulls" the cart forward as you snap it. Rig it correctly, and you'll get 10 m out of that thing.

[AdventWings]

Hey, Storm, no tipping him off how to do it! He needs to figure that out by himself or it's not educational. ;)

Uh... yeah. You can find pretty much anything related to small gears at hobby shops dealing in scale models - more in the motorized models department.

[streak101]

Thanks for the help guys and thank you Storm for that brilliant idea! Technically, I still have to figure out how to rig it, bt i think i get the idea. As for the parts I figured out where i can buy em online but the hobby shop should be a better choice. Thanks for the measurements too, I was way confused in the U.S. we use the icky customary system, and I sometimes confuse myself with that.