1

Mousetrap Name: ______________________________

car
Date: _______________________________

PreAP Physics PBL  Weight = 2

DIRECTIONS: Answer the following questions for the quantitative part of the Mousetrap
Problem Based Learning Projectchallenge. There are 52 points available.
1. FREE-BODY DIAGRAM.
Pretend the dot at right
is your mousetrap car.
Draw and corectly label
the four force vectors
acting on the mouse cart.

2. Record the following in the data table below:

Distance covered Time, t (in sec), Mass, m, of Length (in m) of
by mousetrap car x to cover the mousetrap car mouestrap spring
(in m) distance (in kg) arm

Actual/Estimated
Force required to
diameter of the
pull back
wheel axle (in m) radius of rear car
mousetrap spring
the string/rope is wheels
arm at tip (in N)
wrapped around (in m)

3. ENERGY. Use the WORD BANK to fill in the blanks below.

nowhere photosynthesis distance
work sun food

In order for the mousetrap car to gain energy, somebody has to do ________________
on it. In other words, somebody has to apply a force to the mousetrap car arm through
a ____________________ (in m). The energy that “somebody” used to pull back the
mouestrap car arm didn’t come out of __________________________. It actually
comes from the ______________________ you eat which gets its energy from a
processs called _________________________________. In other words, if you go back
far enough, the mousetrap car is really powered by the ________________________.
 2

4. CALCULATE WORK (W). The work done on the mousetrap arm is found using the
formula W = F  d, where F is the force (in Newtons) applied to the mousetrap car
spring arm and d is the distance (in m) through which the force is applied.
You found the force applied using a spring scale and should have it in the table above.
To find the distance you pulled back you have to use the length of the mousetrap arm
that you also recorded in the table above. Write it here: ___________.
We need to find out what part of the
circumference of a circle the force was applied to
the mousetrap arm. The maximum would be half
a circle if the mouestrap started at one end and
completely unwound to the other end.

If it didn’t (and probably it didn’t go through 180 degrees), we need to find out how
much it did go through.
STEP 1: Find out the circumference of the circle the mousetrap arm would make if it
made an entire rotation. C = 2r = ________________ m

STEP 2: Divide your circumference by 2: C 2 = ________________ m

STEP 3: Now if it didn’t go through the entire half circle, estimate how much of the half-
circle the arm goes through before it stops. Choose one of the following percentages:

 10%  20%  30%  40%  50%  60%  70%  80%  90%

50%
STEP 4: Now multiply your half-circumference value by the 25%
decimal equivalent of the percentage. EX: If your mousetrap car 75%

arm went through 20% of the half circle (see picture at right),
then your final distance, d, will be C2  0.20
Write your distance here: d = ____________ m
STEP 5: Now find the work done by you to move the mousetrap arm into position.

W = F  d = _______________ Joules (the unit of work and energy)

 3

5. ENERGY TRANSFORMATIONS. Use the WORD BANK to fill in the blanks below.
Translational Elastic Chemical
Heat
Kinetic potential Potential
Work out Rotational Kinetic friction

Initially then, you ate food which contained __________ _____________ energy (in
Calories). Then you did __________________ (in
Joules) on the mousetrap spring arm to pull it back.
Now the mousetrap has _____________________
_______________ energy (in Joules) stored in the
coils of its spring. Once the mousetrap arm is
released, the rope/string it is attached to spins the
axle the wheels are attached to giving them _________________________
__________________ energy (in Joules). Then the “rubber meets the road” and the
spinning action of the wheels makes the car move forward in a straight line (translate
forward), turning the energy now into ______________________________ energy (in
Joules). Unfortunately, not all the energy put IN becomes useful energy
____________. There is ____________________ in the spring, the axle, the wheels,
even the air that slows the car down. So some of the energy is working against this
force and eventually turns into ______________________ (in Joules).
6. ELASTIC POTENTIAL ENERGY (EPE). The energy stored in a mousetrap spring is found
using the formula : EPE = ½kθ2, where k is spring constant of the mousetrap spring, a
measure of how “tough” the spring is and  is the angle (in radians) the torsional
mousetrap spring compresses. Let’s find how much of the work (W) that we put in
from Part 4 actually ended up as EPE in the mousetrap spring.

STEP 1: To find , the angle through which the mousetrap spring compressed, we can
just find the angle through which the mousetrap arm went through. They are the same.

𝑠
The formula for the angle is 𝜃 = 𝑟 , where s is the part of the circumference that the
mousetrap car arm went through from Part 4 above and r is the radius of the mousetrap
car arm which you recorded in your data Table on p. 1.
 = __________________
STEP 2: The spring constant “k” of a mousetrap is about 1.3 N/m.

Now find your mousetrap’s EPE: EPE = ½kθ2 = _____________________ Joules

 4

7. FRICTIONAL LOSSES. At this point, some of our initial energy has converted into heat
due to frictional losses. The amount of heat generated is simply the difference between
our initial energy input into the mousetrap as Work and the EPE that the mousetrap has.
Find it here: Heat = Work – EPE = ____________________________________ Joules

8. SIMPLE MACHINES.

_____________ MULTIPLE CHOICE. There are two main simple machines at work in
our mousetrap car. They are:
A. Lever and screw C. Inclined plane and wheel and axle
B. Lever and wheel and axle D. Wedge and screw
Use the WORD BANK to fill in the blanks below.

Distance force great lever small

Mechanical
minimum axle nothing out
advantage
If we use our mousetrap as is, it will simply not move through enough distance to make our car
go the _________________________ distance required. So we used a simple machine, a
_______________________ that allowed the mousetrap spring
force to move through a greater amount of
_______________________ (in m). Simple machines give the
user what is called __________________________
__________________________ , a “bionic benefit”, so to speak,
for using them that they would not otherwise get. The user puts
IN very little _________________________ (in N) and gets a lot of force _________________ in
exchange.

You never get something for ___________________________, however. The price for applying
such a small input force is that you have to apply it through a ______________ distance.

In the case of our mousetrap car, the mousetrap lever arm is very long and
moves through a great amount of distance. Therefore, only a
__________________ amount of force is required to move it at the tip.
The rope that comes off the lever arm wraps around a tiny
_______________ that the wheels are attached to. Because the axle spins
through such a small distance, a great amount of Force (in N) is available to
spin the wheels.
 5

9. CALCULATING THE FORCE AT THE WHEELS.

We now will find out how much force is accelerating the car forward initially. You might be
tempted to think it is the force that you measured with the spring scale and recorded in
your data table on p. 1. But this is just the force at the tip of the lever arm. We must use
the principles of mechanical advantage to find what force, ideally, made it to back wheels.

STEP 1: Mechanical advantage (M.A.) is all about ratios and proportions. The ratio for
M.A. is between the force applied (F1) and the distance over which it is applied (d1)
compared to the force output (F2) and the distanc over which it is applied (d2).
Look at the picture below:

F1 F2
d1

d2

The ratio set up comes from the Law of Conservation of energy and the work formula. The
Law of Conservation of Energy states that the amount of work in must equal the work out.
Win = Wout
F1d1 = F2d2  Substituting the formula for work.

F 1d1 = F2d 2

In Table 1 we have the values of F1 (the force on the mousetrap spring lever arm), d1 (the
length of the mousetrap spring lever arm), and d2 (the estimated/actual radius of the axle)
We can solve for F2 then and get the force turning the rear axle.
𝐅𝟏 ∙ 𝐝𝟏
= 𝐅𝟐
𝐝𝟐

Go ahead and find your F2: _____________________ N F3

STEP 2: Now we need to do the process again for the wheel and F2 d3
axle. The axle transmits its force (F2) to the wheel (F3). The axle
has a small radius (d2) and the wheel has a big radius (d3). So we
will lose a little bit of mechanical advantage going from axle to
wheel.
d2
𝐅𝟐 ∙𝐝𝟐
Calculating again… = 𝐅𝟑
𝐝𝟑

Go ahead and find your F3: _____________________ N

 6

10. FORCES AND MOTION. Use the WORD BANK to fill in the blanks below.
forward 3rd accelerate
force reaction friction

According to Newton’s 2nd Law, when a

_____________________ (in N) is applied to a
mass, that mass will
______________________________ (in m/s2).
The wheels are pushing on the ground with a
force F3 that we found in Part 9. By Newton’s __________ Law, for every action there is
an equal and opposite _________________. So the ground pushes back on the
mousetrap car making it go ____________________________.
Let’s find the initial acceleration of the car using Newton’s 2nd Law assuming none of the
energy has been lost due to _______________________.
𝐅𝟑
F3 = ma  a = = ______________ m/s2 (where F3 is the force at the wheels, and m is
𝐦

the mass of the mousetrap cart (in kg))

11. IDEAL DISTANCE VS. REAL DISTANCE TRAVELLED. Now we will compare the ideal
distance that the mousetrap car should have travelled (without frictional losses) vs. the
distance it actually travelled in real life.
To find the theoretical (ideal) distance, dideal, we go back to a formula from the past:

dideal = ½at2 where a is the acceleration you just found in Step 10, and t is the time you
recorded in your data table on page. 1.
Find dideal now: dideal = _____________________ m
Now compare dideal with dreal, the distance you recorded in the table on p. 1.

12. WORK DONE AGAINST FRICTION. As a final step, we will find the work done against
friction by comparing Wideal with Wreal.
Wfrict = W = Wideal Wreal = F3dideal – F3dreal = ___________________ J

This is the work that the mousetrap car did against friction!!!

THE END