POTENTIAL ENERGY CAR PROJECT
Purpose
Name(s):
You will be building your own potential energy propelled cars using the materials provided in
class as well as anything you would like to bring from home. You will have rubber bands,
mousetraps, propellers and balloons to use as potential energy sources to build your car.
You will be finding the distance that your car has traveled at different time intervals and use
that information to calculate the speed of the car at different points.
Equation Needed
The Activity
Building the Car (NAME YOUR CAR!)
You will be building your car out of the materials provided (duct tape, cardboard, potential
energy sources, string, wooden rods and cds, straws) as well as anything you bring from home.
The car must be only propelled by either a mousetrap, rubber band, balloon, propeller or a
combination of them!
(5 pts) Use the space provided to make a sketch of what your finalized car looks like below and
include a materials list to the right:
Sketch of Finalized Car
Materials Used to Build Car
Finding MAX Distance (Last Day, 3 pts)
This will be done at the very end of the weeklong lab. Each team will compete to see how far
their car will go compared to others in the class. We will do three trials for our distance runs
and the furthest three cars receive extra credit AND CANDY! You will also find the average
speed over the length of each run.
Run
Distance
(meters)
Average Speed (m/s)
Run 1
Run 2
Run 3
Making A Distance vs. Time Graph
You will use the slow motion video app “Ubersense” or comparable video system to take a
video of your car traveling over a period of 8 seconds and approximate how far the car has
gone at each time interval. You will then use this data to make a graph and answer questions
regarding it.
Time (sec)
0 seconds
1 seconds
2 second
3 seconds
4 seconds
5 seconds
6 seconds
7 seconds
8 seconds
Distance Traveled
(meters)
Graphing Distance vs. Time
On the grid below, graph distance vs. time so distance is on the y-axis (vertical) and time is on
the x-axis (horizontal). Make sure you label the axes, give the graph a title and make each box
the appropriate value. Use the table from Finding the Distance.
Post Graph Questions
1) Use the data table to calculate the speed of your potential energy car between 1-2
seconds.
2) The steeper the slope the faster the car is going. At about what time was the car
moving the fastest?
3) The flatter the slope the slower the car was going. At about what time was the car
moving the slowest?
4) At 7 seconds what was your car doing based on what was happening with your graph?
5) Briefly describe the motion of your car and include specific times.
Post Project Questions
1) What did you name your car?
2) What kind of energy did the car start off as having stored in the mouse trap?
3) What did that energy turn into as the mouse trap was released?
4) Why didn’t the car roll forever? Where did the energy go that caused it to stop?
5) If you could do it over again, what would you change about your car? Why?
6) When was the speed of your car the greatest? How did you know?
7) When was the speed of your car the slowest? How did you know?
8) Draw your best mouse below: