In one of the BOLTs that I am in right now called Mouse Trap Challenge I, along with my teammates, Ricky and Maison, made a mouse trap powered car. First we took apart a bike tire to get the metal axel out of it because it would be nice and smooth. We then made the chassis out of two pieces of wood and drilled holes for the axels. Our wheels were made of CD's because they had holes in the middle and wrapped them in duct tape for traction. We then attached the axels, wheels, and mouse trap to the chassis. We tied a string to the back axel and the other side to the mouse trap. When we wrapped the string around the axel and set off the trap the axel would spin the wheels and it would move. At the moment, it did not go far at all, we knew we could make it better so we got rid of unnecessary weight. we trashed the chassis and the back axel, the two things that took the most time to make. We replaces the wood with cardboard and the back axel with a smooth, sanded down pencil. During testing the wheels spun without moving the car, there was not enough traction. We covered the wheels with clay and that made it so much better. After the string would unwind it would rewind the other way until it stopped, we fixed this by using a longer string. we lengthened the mouse trap with an extension to make it so that the string traveled further, giving it more torque. We replaced the string with fishing line because it lasted longer and survived more tests. I finished it with a gnarly paint job, using sharpies and after testing many many times we had our finished product. Our car traveled over seven meters giving us the winning distance and a first place metal.
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ReflectionAuthorBryce Tenney
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