Heather Latter
When Ilka Milne heard about the mousetrap car competitions other schools and science clubs have held in the U.S., she thought it might be something her Grade 9 tech class could do here.
“It’s a pretty open-ended activity,” the Fort Frances High School teacher explained.
“They have to power a car using only a mousetrap.”
The vehicles use the spring power of the mousetrap, utilizing the motion to turn the car’s axel or wheels.
The most common design, used by many of Milne’s students, is to attach a string to the bar and wrap it around an axle.
As the bar is released, it pulls on the string—causing the axle (and wheels) to turn.
“The students were a little tentative to start,” Milne admitted. But since getting started on the project earlier this month, she’s been “quite impressed.”
“It’s been my pleasure hearing them problem-solving,” she remarked.
“All of a sudden, you hear someone say, ‘I have a great idea,’ and off they go to work on it and they come back with something really creative.”
Milne said she encouraged the students to use mostly recycled materials, so many of the vehicles have incorporated items such as CDs, pens, chopsticks, balloons, etc.
The goal of the project is to which car can travel the greatest distance.
“But it isn’t just about that,” Milne stressed. “It’s about the learning process.”
She noted some students have gone through as many as eight different designs, tweaking each one to improve it.
For instance, many had to work on reducing the friction of the wheels while others had to widen the axel in order to get the car moving.
“There are a lot of limitations so they had to push the envelop,” Milne remarked.
“[But] the students have been quite eager and engaged,” she added. “It’s been fun to see how persistent they’ve been, the insistence on problem-solving.
“You don’t see that very often.”
The class worked on making their vehicles the week of May 6 and then last week were busy testing them, racing them down the hallways of the high school to see whose would go the farthest.
Chase Badiuk’s car was one of the top contenders.
“Mine is about four-feet long and made of aluminum,” he noted, noting he used old vinyl records as wheels.
“I learned that it depends on how big the wheels are because with a bigger circumference, it can cover more distance,” he explained.
“I really liked this project,” Badiuk added. “It’s been a lot of fun.”
By yesterday, Milne expected each student in the class to have a working car that is able to travel a minimum distance of two metres.
She noted that due to the success of the project, she might have students participate in a mousetrap car competition in a future year or organize one themselves by possibly challenging another class.
