Wylie Williamson racing his car against another student.
Wylie WIlliamson and his winning car.
Mr. Hedden works on a car with a student. Submitted photos
BETHEL — What’s Happening at Telstar Middle School these days?
The mousetrap cars in Mr. Hedden’s 8th grade science class, that’s what!
Have you ever raced a mousetrap car? Well, Telstar Middle School eighth graders in Mr. Hedden’s science class have! Many people might not have known that you can make a car out of a mousetrap. Not only is it possible, but they actually work, and eighth graders found that out in a fun lesson plan in Mr. Hedden’s science class.
Mr. Hedden explained that a mouse trap car is any vehicle that is propelled by a mouse trap. The only parameters he put on the mousetrap car in terms of building it was that the mouse trap must be the only way to make the car move, and the car must go at least 5 meters.
According to Mr. Hedden, “At the start of the year, eighth grade students learn and explore with the ideas of force, friction, acceleration, and mass. All concepts centered around Newton’s Laws of Motion”.
To take it to the next level, Mr. Hedden has the students actually build a mousetrap car and race it against other students in the class. While doing this project, students use their knowledge about Newton’s Laws and then are introduced to topics like potential energy and kinetic energy.
Mr. Hedden knows what he is talking about, because he has been doing this project for four years. He has spent lots of time trying to improve and help his students. He has seen a variety of things from the students, “Over the past few years,” he said, “I have learned that any student can get a mouse trap car to move generally. I have also learned that sometimes students you do not expect to have a fast car do indeed have one. Lastly, I have learned that students need time to build, test and then make adjustments.” He also has had students surprise him with their cars, adding that, “It is not always your highest achieving students that build the fastest cars.”
This year’s winner of the mousetrap car competition was Wylie Williamson. Wylie believes that his car was the fastest because it was a very small car, and it didn’t have very much air resistance. When asked if Wylie did anything special to make his car go faster, he said, “I did not do anything special besides not wearing out the spring as much”. He added that he was very surprised that he won. For Wylie, the best part of the project was that he got the opportunity to do anything that he wanted with the car, and that there were no directions that students had to follow.
In the end, Mr. Hedden’s students learned very valuable information about force and friction while having fun building a mousetrap car.
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