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| Lauren Biesinger with her mousetrap car. | 207.4 KB |
Get the wheels in your head turning! The eighth graders recently made mousetrap cars at SJHS. In mid-April the eighth grade just finished their unit on simple machines in science. As the eighth graders finished up with their inventions of mouse trap cars, we were all impressed by the results of this year’s mousetrap cars. According to Mr. Kindrick, a science teacher at SJHS, the science teachers want the students to understand simple machines and how they can make our work easier.
When the mousetrap cars were due, classes got to go into the hall and race their cars. People eagerly lined up to see how far their cars would go. Some students students were lucky as their cars cruised past the extra credit mark, but others encountered some last minute problems. According to Abi Maccabee, an eighth grader at SJHS, students get two tries to race their mousetrap car and whatever try goes farther is their final score. It was fun for almost everybody.
Mrs. Carpenter, another SJHS science teacher, said, “We want the students to know that energy can be changed from one form to another.” There are a lot of lessons the SJHS eighth-grade students can learn from this. Garrett Huffaker, an eighth grader at SJHS, said, “The assignment teaches you how to combine simple machines to make a compound machine.” The mousetrap car is great way to teach multiple things and students may even get more out of the lesson than originally planned.
It was a fun project, but what people enjoyed most was the final outcome of their cars. There were all different types of cars. Ones with big records as wheels and others with spools of thread. Some cars had big long effort arms and others had number-two pencils. According to Mr. Kindrick, he likes the designs that just go far. But people still like to decorate, spray paint, and just deck out their cars. The most common design this year was cars with CD’s as wheels.
This year’s mousetrap cars were great, and we would like to highlight Lizzy Brimhall for beating the school record. Her car went 236 feet and many claim it would of gone farther too, if the car hadn’t run into the wall. Her car went eighty feet farther than the world record. After this year’s great results, we can’t wait to see next year’s mousetrap cars.