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Mine and Manuel's car traveled exactly five meters in just over nine seconds. It involves Newton's First and Second laws, using the inertia of the mousetrap to keep it in place as it spins the axle, as Newton's first law states that an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force, and an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. We attached a 100 gram weight to the mousetrap to increase it's mass which also increases the force required to make it move. When it can move the axle without being moved itself, the car moves. We didn't increase the lever arm of the mousetrap, which may have contributed to it only going five meters. Our mousetrap car moved very slowly, because it had a lot of mass, therefore the comparatively small force of the mousetrap closing was not enough to make it move quickly. We used two frisbees, a pencil, a piece of wood and the mousetrap to make our car. The mass may also have contributed to how quickly it stopped once the lever arm stopped moving it.
Reflection: Our mousetrap car was very makeshift. We are lucky it worked at all. If we could do it again I would spend more time gathering materials, and also make sure that we had our mousetrap before the say of the final run. Just in general, more effort all around would be nice.
