mousetrap car help center

Questions:

Where should I Attach the Mouse Trap?

By Doc Fizzix // Published Nov 16, 2005

Answer:
There is no "actual" place to attach the mousetrap, It really depends on how you are designing or building your mouse trap powered vehicle. If you want more speed and/or power then you will want as shorter lever arm in order to create more torque,these means that the mousetrap will then be attached closer to the drive axle. If the mouse trap is placed too close to the drive axle the pulling force my be so great that the wheels spin out at the start causing your racer to waste energy.

If you are building a distance traveler then you want a longer lever arm so you can wind more string around the drive axle so the vehicle can be pulled further, this means that the mousetrap should be mounted further from the drive axle. Be careful here, if the mouse trap is mounted too far from the drive axle the pulling force will be too small to pull the vehicle and it will either not move at all or stop moving as it travels down the course.

By changing the length of the lever arm you change the pulling force, longer lever arms have less pulling force than smaller lever arms. Where you mount the mouse trap is just as important as the length of the lever arm. Where you mount the mousetrap and how long you make the lever arm really go hand-in-hand. The lever arm should only be long enough to "just" reach from the placement of the mousetrap on the vehicle to the drive axle when the string is fully wound up around the drive axle. The actual length of the lever are will depend on the design of your car.

The same concept of torque applies to the ratio of the drive axle to drive wheel relationship. Adjustments can be made to the size of the drive axle to change the torque, see the article on axles and wheels - the gearing

See the following related articles to get started:

• basic mousetrap vehicle propulsions (how to make it move)
• how to make a good distance traveler
• how to make a good speed-trap racer