Mouse Trap Car

A major grade assignment for Integrated Physics and Chemistry is to build a mouse trap car. This a car that usually has CDs for wheels and is powered by a lever and a mousetrap. Erin had told us that she had one due around March 10th. Since we were so busy getting Joe ready to go to the MTC at the time she brought home the assignment, we simply told her that Greg would help her make it once returned from Utah. Of course once we had this discussion the mousetrap assignment was completely forgotten. We took Joe to the MTC and I flew home and Greg stayed in Utah to help his dad with some projects. When Erin reminded me about her assignment, I just about panicked. Although all of the other kids had built a mousetrap car, Greg was always the parental helper. Now it was up to me and I was wishing I had paid attention to the process! We read the assignment sheet (not very helpful) and then googled mousetrap cars and came up with a plan. And after several trips to Loews, and some trial and error we managed to get a working one built. Erin wanted a fun theme for her car, so we painted a square piece of wood blue and glued on some lily pads made out of construction paper and big green frogs. It was really cute. (Unfortunately we forgot to take a picture of it before it was turned in.) In addition to being cute, the car was big, and slow, and didn't move very far. But when we added a longer lever in an attempt to make it travel further, it didn't work as well as the original design. So we put the original lever back on the mousetrap and agreed to be happy it worked and leave it alone.

Erin took her mousetrap car to school, happy to have completed the assignment in time. Once she got to class she discovered that her teacher had extended the due date by a week. The teacher had made this decision after Erin's class the day before, and so no one in her class knew about it. So in the end it turns out we could have waited until Greg got home to make the car. But I guess it was good to use my brain. The good part of being done early was that Erin now received some bonus points. In the end the bonus points helped her because after sitting for a week, the glue we used to mount the mouse trap failed and so she couldn't prove that it worked. But since she got 80 points for making one and 10 points for turning it in early it was all good. And now the Jensen family is officially done making mouse trap cars. Hurray! Oh, and it turned out that even though we had thought her car did not move very far, most of the cars that did work went shorter distances. Too bad no one at school got to see our success!