Physics Students Get Creative With Mousetrap Cars

Physics Students Get Creative With Mousetrap Cars

If you were walking through the halls of Cranberry High School recently, there’s a good chance that you might have seen some odd contraptions rolling past you. 

These contraptions happened to be mousetrap cars created by students as a part of the energy unit in Mr. Bedee’s 11th grade physics classes. The goal of this project was to be able to create a small vehicle propelled by the stored energy generated by a mousetrap and a constructed arm.

Students were given the opportunity to design three different types of cars: speed, distance, and hill climb. After they built their cars, the students were required to race them throughout the halls to gather information for calculations and to see whose vehicles would go the fastest or the farthest. 

This brought both entertainment and friendly competition into students’ typical routines, so it’s no wonder why this project was so popular among the physics classes.