The Sandtrap By: Austin Rider Jennifer Godbold Kyle Woods Stephen Yontz

The Team

Introduction Our goal was to build a mechanical “motor” to lift a 1 kg mass to a height of 1 m at around 10 sec. Purchased materials included a mousetrap, toy car, ball, water bottles, nerf ball, and gallon jug. Wood, water, sand, thread, duct tape, and nails are the other materials not purchased, but included in cost.

Process We rev-up our toy car and place it on our platform to hit the ball. The ball rolls down the ramp and hits the mousetrap. The trap pulls down the gallon jug with weight. The balance’s center of mass shifts to the water bottles of sand and falls off the balance. The water bottle pulls the 1 kg weight to a height of 1 m.

Energy Conversions  Toy Car Work to Kinetic Energy.  Ball Gravitational Potential Energy to Kinetic Energy  Mousetrap Elastic Potential Energy to Kinetic Energy  Bottles of sand Gravitational Potential Energy to Kinetic Energy to finally lift 1 kg weight

Design Issues Most of our time was spent with coming up with an ideal device to lift the weight. Experimented several ways to balance both weights using our balance. We struggled keeping the balance from falling off the platform.

Conclusions Our project took about 4 hours to construct plus time planning beforehand. We enjoyed working together and collaborating different ideas with each other. We saved the best for last!