Racer Recommendation

          Some of the things that went well with our car was that when greased the axles spun really well in the axis and once we screwed the front wheel so it was tight and not wobbling it rolled way better.  Some tips for future racers are to make sure that the wheels are straight, level, well aligned and don't wobble as this will best utilize the power exerted by the mouse trap.  For the race itself it would be nice to have the course meters marks better defined so its easy to tell how far your car went.

Post Race Reflection

    

        Our car on race day did reasonably well according to how we though it was going to go.  We got 5th place in the distance with a distance of 10 meters and 6th place in the drag with a time of 5.75 seconds.  If we would have had the chance to work with out car after I would have made sure the chassis was straight and the string held on to the axle consistently.  The back left wheel also needed straightening as it was pretty wobbly.  If I could build a whole new car I would make it out of lighter material and make a better attachment for the string to the axle, as it slipped a lot.  On our old car the rear wheels really needed to mounted level so it went straight and true.

 

Drag Race

Mousetrap Vehicle Test Day

Setting the trap

Wrapping the string around the axle

        Last Thursday we did our mousetrap vehicle tests.  My group, Corie, Rae, and I took our vehicle to the math hallway and started testing it.  At first we were having trouble as the axle wasn't turning very well but we fixed that with some grease and it now goes at least 6 meters before turning left and crashing into the wall versus just 3 meters and just stopping.  We also added electrical tape to the tires to add traction and we also glued the axle to the wheel so it didn't slip and waste torque.Our vehicle was pretty easy to operate though it was sometimes tricky getting the string to catch so we could wind it up. 
       One of the biggest problems we now have to overcome is getting the vehicle to go in a straight line and we will have to bend the chassis in order to do that.  Once we do that I am confident that it will go 10 meters no problem.

Spring Break Physics

Even though I was out of classes for this week, I still experienced physics in many ways.  One of the biggest ways was when I went snowboarding.  When you are snowboarding there is many ways that different aspects of physics affect you and your snowboard.  There is the gravitational pull which is what makes you go down the hill.  There is also the whole factor of friction between your board and the snow, which affects how fast you go.

Following

Today we started following some of the other students blogs and also started commenting on them.  We also worked on setting some settings on our own blogs.

Another Day

Well today was the first day of visiting other people's blogs and following them.  I think it went pretty well as we all now know what to do and have gotten a good head start.

First Post

So today we pretty much just set up our blogs.  This included setting our templates, backgrounds and other options like font, color, ect.