Mouse Trap Car

2 Pages 464 Words

Purpose and background Theory

The purpose of this project is to build a mouse tap car and apply it to Newton’s laws of motion. Newton’s first law states that every material object continues in its state of rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces acting on it. Newton’s second law states that the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting on the object (in the direction of the net force) and is inversely proportional to the mass of the object. Newton’s third law of motion states that whenever one object exerts a force on a second object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first. Then these laws will apply to your mousetrap car and they will affect the out come of the distance traveled in your mousetrap.






Data
1st Trial it traveled 14 feet in 21.34 seconds Velocity .66 m/s
2nd Trial it traveled 14 feet in 11.34 seconds Velocity 1.2 m/s
3rd Trial it traveled 14 feet in 15.78 seconds Velocity .89 m/s

This is from the nose of the mousetrap car starting at zero feet and zero seconds. Then you release the mousetrap and start you watch and stop timing when the car passes 14 feet. Then you record you results. I did this three times and the first time the string go held up and it went peaty slow. Final velocity = initial velocity +(acceleration *time interval) FV= 14 feet FI= 0 feet (A= ?, acceleration T= seconds, time for trial)












Conclusion


In the mousetrap car you can see that all of Newton’s laws applies to it. In Newton’s first law you can see it acting on the mousetrap car when it is stand still and when it is moving. It moves is a straight line of motion unless other states of forces are acting on it. In Newton’s second law of motion you can see this acting out in when the car is in motion and accelerating. The rate of acceleration of the mousetrap car is ...