Title:
Member: Justin Mabutas
Member: Ryan Gotshall
Period 4
Physics
Teacher: Peng Yav
Joustrap: "The Bearer of Bad News"

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Background of the project
Design: How we designed "The Bearer of Bad News" and Materials list
Construction Procedure: How we constructed "The Bearer of Bad News"
Operation of Mousetrap Car: Explanation on how it works
Results
Conclusion/Improvements
Appendix

Introduction:
This project was assigned in order to test our knowledge and creativity on how we could use only a mousetrap in order to power a hand-made car. The project simulates a joust by having two "joustraps" go head to head, each joustrap holding one egg. A joustrap wins by either reaching the line first, or damaging the opponent's egg. We went into this project having a defensive design for our joustrap.

Design:
We started by deciding how we would construct the joustrap, and then after that we would think of what we else we could add on to it. Ryan offered to use his Lego wheels for the wheels on our joustrap since they have good grip and thus should have a stronger initial velocity. We initially though our joustrap would be made out of mostly legos, but then we soon realized that that was against the rules. We then thought we should use a piece of wood for the frame that would hold our essential lego pieces. Upon seeing another group using cardboard instead of wood, we decided to use cardboard for the frame as it was much easier to work with since cutting and shaping the cardboard would not be a problem. As for the weapon of the joustrap, we decided that we wanted a fast defensive joustrap that would be able to take a head on collision from the opposing car. We also decided that we'd have the joustrap hold the egg using a piece from an egg carton.

Our original design was to make the car out of wood, which is the design below, but we found it much easier to construct it out of cardboard so we decided to use the design above. Cardboard was easy to cut and there is an abundance of it so we were more flexible with using it.

Our final design was a slimmer version with 3 wheels and for the weapon he decided to make a diagonal shield that would decrease the impact. 

We made a basic Lego design of the car, but then we decided to switch from a four wheel to a three wheel car because we thought it would be more beneficial. This was what the model looked like prior to the cardboard design.

Materials:
-Legos: free ($3-5)
-Cardboard: free (~$1)
-Mousetrap: free (~$3)
-Hot glue: free
-Egg carton: free (~$1 for just the carton, no eggs)

Construction Procedure:
We took two long pieces of cardoard for the sides and glued them vertically to a flat peice of cardborad. On the flat piece of carboard lay our moustrap and our egg protector. This was a piece of an egg carton hot glued onto the car.

Operation of Mousetrap car:
We tied a string onto the clip of the mousetrap, and then tied the string onto the axle which held our two back wheels. Once the string was tied onto both the axle and the mousetrap, we set the mousetrap and once it was set, we spun the axle until it couldn't be spun anymore. By triggering the mousetrap, the clip would pull the string and since the string was attached to the axle, it would pull the axle and cause the back wheels to spin, and that would set the joustrap in motion.

Results:
Our car tied for fifth. We won the first 2 rounds by default becasue the other teams car didnt quite reach us. However, once we started reaching the bigger cars, our cardboard model didnt really stand a chance. 

Our car lost due to head on collisions versus two cars that were bigger than ours. The first car we lost to was slower, but bigger and had a weapon that when the cars connected, it would drop a piece of wood attached to their car and it would fall and hit the egg, which is what happened resulting in our loss. The design of the car was pretty good and looked like this.

The other car we lost to after this had a design similar to ours but was faster and had a better shield. It both reached the finish line faster and had a better shield which resulted in a loss for us. When the cars collided, our car's cockpit was sent flying and the egg cracked. This design looked like this.

Conclusion/Improvements:
In conclusion, our joustrap needed to be faster and more defensive. It lost in speed and it also didn't handle the collision from the opposing joustraps. If we could change the car, we could figure out how to make it faster and also figure out a way to improve the cockpit so that it can hold the egg and protect it from collisions.

Appendix: