PROTOTYPE TO WORKING MODEL

5/22/2018

How far will yours go?

Today, students had their final class to work on their mousetrap cars. I overheard one student say, "I didn't redo mine once!" Then, the student also said, "I redid mine five times!" This student understood the importance of self-assessment and feedback. This student and his partner went back to the drawing board to improve on their designs through ongoing self, peer, and teacher feedback. They are good models of the learning process! BRAVO! BRAVO!

1.) MATH: Complete worksheet 7.5 on Congruence and Similarity.

2.) LA/NOVEL APPROACH:

Make sure your first draft of your powerful response is ready for tomorrow. You will be switching with a neighbour and giving one another peer feedback using the rubric.
Specific feedback will be given directly on your Google Docs.
Rubrics will be highlighted.

3.) POST A RESPONSE:

How many times have you re-assessed your mousetrap car and changed your design plans?
Why did you change your design plans?
What are three things you did to your design to make it better? Explain.
Did it help you improve your mousetrap car? Explain.
What was the one thing that improved your mousetrap car the most?
What were some of the 'GOALS' of this project?
Use the standard paragaph format to complete your PAR.
PAR FEEDBACK POLICE: Eknoor, Stephanie, Miles, and Sofia. The students listed will give specific feedback to all students who post based on the givens (spelling, capitals, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, etc). If one student receives feedback from one of the 4 students, you do not have to give this student more feedback. So each student above should give feedback to about 7 students each.

VIDEO LINK:
How to Build a Mousetrap Car

Casey

5/22/2018 03:44:15 pm

FIRST!

Hana

5/22/2018 03:45:05 pm

2nd

Tasia

5/22/2018 03:58:24 pm

Third

Jerry

5/22/2018 04:54:23 pm

Awesome Andrew

5/22/2018 05:15:29 pm

Eknoor

5/22/2018 05:19:25 pm

6th

Caden

5/22/2018 05:38:04 pm

Eknoor

5/22/2018 05:46:14 pm

My P.A.R.
As you all know, we have been working on our mousetrap cars. We had our last session today right after lunch. It was a fun learning period. Stephanie and I are partners. Overall I think we did a pretty good job. We re-assessed our mousetrap car about three or four times and changed our design plan twice. Why did we change our design plan? Well, our car wasn't stable enough so we added another layer of cardboard. Another thing we did was fix the tires because they were crooked. These two things helped the mousetrap car a lot. It goes faster and straighter than it did before we tried it. One thing that mostly improved our mousetrap car was probably adding another layer of the cardboard because we didn't add that it probably would've snapped. Some of the goals for this project are to see how fast your car can go, if it can go more than three meters, (I think) and who's car looks the coolest. I hope that our car works at least. Maybe even win some of the challenges.

Rushed. Give feedback plz.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 05:46:29 pm

Real first!

Casey

5/22/2018 06:23:20 pm

@Eknoor, Mhm.

Casey

5/22/2018 06:38:59 pm

@Eknoor, You spell "Please" like so not "Plz". You're welcome. Hehehehe.....

Eknoor

5/22/2018 07:19:18 pm

@ Casey - Lol thanks.

Sofia

5/22/2018 08:28:11 pm

@Eknoor- Your writing's very strong, and I really like the structure of your paragraph, however, there are still a few things that you may want to change. First, I think that 95% of your sentences are two short. Try to join a few together, because a stream of short sentences tend to sound really choppy, and is quite hard/awkward to read. Second, at the near end of your paragraph, where you wrote "One thing that mostly improved our mousetrap car was probably adding another layer of the cardboard because we didn't add that it probably would've snapped." I think you should re-phrase the beginning of the sentence, to something smoother, and more to the point (eg. Something that improved our car the most was...). Lastly, I think you should change where you wrote "I hope that our car works at least". This sentence just overall sounds really awkward and is kind of... strange to the tongue if that makes any sense. I also think it's grammatically incorrect. Maybe change it to "I just hope our car works", or "hopefully our car will work".

Eknoor

5/22/2018 08:32:55 pm

@ Sofia - Thanks!

Miles

5/23/2018 07:05:17 am

@Sofia- Change "two" to "too" on line three of your paragraph.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 08:52:14 pm

My P.A.R. (Edited)
As you all know, we have been working on our mousetrap cars and we had our last session today right after lunch. It was a fun learning period. Stephanie and I are partners and overall I think we did a pretty good job. We re-assessed our mousetrap car about three or four times and changed our design plan twice. Why did we change our design plan? Well, our car wasn't stable enough so we added another layer of cardboard. Another thing we did was fix the tires because they were crooked. It now goes faster and straighter than it did before we tried it. Something that improved our car the most was just the wheels we fixed because that is what helps the car mostly overall. Some of the goals I want to reach for this project are to see if our car goes really fast and if it can go more than three meters. Hopefully our car works. Maybe we can even win some of the challenges.

Awesome Andrew

5/22/2018 05:52:56 pm

How many times have you re-assessed your mousetrap car and changed your design plans?
2 times

Why did you change your design plans?
Because it was too fragile and lever arm was too short

What are three things you did to your design to make it better? Explain.
Make the wheels more stable. Make the car stronger. Make the lever arm longer.

Did it help you improve your mousetrap car? Explain.
Yes, because why else would I change it?

What was the one thing that improved your mousetrap car the most?
Make it stronger because if I didn't, it would've went nowhere because it's broken.

What were some of the 'GOALS' of this project?
The lightning mouse award thing.

Mr. Hong

5/22/2018 06:13:11 pm

@ Andrew - Please reread the PAR and following the instructions. You must post in paragraph formate.

Mr. Hong

5/22/2018 06:14:01 pm

EDIT/REVISION:

- I was typing quickly and mistyped the word format as 'formate'. I did a quick self-assessment and edited/revised my work. Self-assessment is a powerful tool/skill.

Cassandra

5/22/2018 09:30:18 pm

I think our group had to re assess our mouse trap car quite a few times because some things didnt go as planned like the design we didnt have enough time and also we didnt have that much time to paint our car a universe background so we changed it to a stormy serious background. We changed our design plans because like i said we didnt have enough time to do it and it took longer then we expected. I think we made our car stronger by putting more glue on the corners because of the force from the mouse trap lever. We put a cape on the mouse trap car becuse we thought it would have been creative and finally we put a hole in the top of our mouse trap car so the lever can do its thing and it wont get caught on anything. It improved our mouse trap car because if we didnt add the cape then it would be sort of plain at the back of it. If we also didnt put glue on the mouse trap car then when we pull back the mouse trap lever the whole thing can just snap and everything can fall apart and burn our eyes. Finally if we didnt put a hole in the roof of our mouse trap car then the lever might not fit and we wouldnt even get to pull the lever back because the roof is in the way! This helped us because we could try and succed for one of the awards. The one thing that was the most important was the glue and the no roof idea becaise if we had a roof then we would fail in the race and if we didnt glue it then our whole car can break and it wont function aswell. Our goald for this mouse trap car race is to win the farthest one because the farthest one could be a really good one to beat. I think that because it can show how strong the car is and how much effort we put into it as a team!

Issac

5/22/2018 06:55:01 pm

My car would break a lot. It broke about 5-10 times and every time I tried to fix it by gluing them together it would snap in another place. Then Coco told me I should use cardboard as a base instead of wood because cardboard was sturdier. I took her advice and it became heavier but, it worked a lot better and would not snap. There were three more things that I also improved on my car to make it better. First, instead of using the rope for the coil thing I used fishing line. It helped improve my car because the rope broke easily and when I coil the rope around the axle it would be too big to fit. Secondly, I used balloons to wrap my wheels. This helped because the cardboard was really bumpy and by putting the balloon it made it more smooth. Lastly, I decided to use hot glue instead of duct tape to repair my car. This helped because sometimes the duct tape wouldn't want to stick for some reason and hot glue was also easier to use. What helped the most though was definitely changing the base of the car to cardboard. After changing and re-assessing my car it turned out pretty well. Hope it doesn't break again.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 07:21:35 pm

@ Issac - Since it's paragraph form try to get a good hook for the beginning.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 07:44:54 pm

@ Issac - Also add this: What were some of the 'GOALS' of this project?

I don't think you have that.

Eason

5/22/2018 07:17:08 pm

We have re-assessed and changed our mousetrap car design four times. We changed the middle board because it was broken the first time. We changed to another piece to make the car stronger and more stable. We also moved one of the rear wheel to the front so that the car can run faster. It worked very well because the speed has increased. I think the goal of this project is to make the car go as fast as possible.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 07:22:31 pm

@ Eason - Get a good beginning and a conclusion at the end.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 07:35:50 pm

@ Eason - Also, in the fifth sentence take the "has" out.

Sofia

5/22/2018 08:29:57 pm

@Eason- make sure to just check over your paragraph for some grammar mistakes. I also recommend changing your paragraph, so that not (almost) all sentences start with "We"

Casey

5/22/2018 07:17:10 pm

The mousetrap car project is really fun. It is gives us the opportunity to work with people we want to and be very creative. For the first question Miles, Matt, and I have re-assessed our design multiple times. We were going to restart yet, we realized that it was too late. I think it would be better if it was just 2 of us. Currently, I don’t love our design and wish we could re-do it but the races are tomorrow. We have change our design plans ever so slightly, we made the body smaller, and we also changed the tires to CD’s instead of cardboard. The cardboard was not as sturdy and the car kind of bumped along due to the rough edges. The CD’s were a better solution. Did that improve our car? Oh yeah. Our car goes a lot smoother because the CD’s wheels. They are a lot more smooth on the edges, and sturdy. What improved our car the most? Considering we didn’t make any big changes to our original design I think it was the wheels. What is our goal for this project? Well, like other groups or pairs it is to win some sort of award, or prize. It doesn’t matter if it is for longest distance, or fastest car, we just want to win something. We are also crossing our fingers in hopes that our cars doesn’t fall apart while racing and to win something.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 07:28:16 pm

@ Casey - Write 2 as two in the fifth sentence, in the seventh sentence write change as changed, and in the last sentence write cars as car. Another thing is that get a better closing.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 07:30:05 pm

@ Casey - Also try not to always write like this: Did that improve our car?... What improved our car the most?... What is our goal for this project?...

You did that a lot at the end.

Sofia

5/22/2018 08:30:39 pm

@Eknoor- all numbers below 10 are supposed to be written with letters.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 08:33:54 pm

@ Sofia - ??

Sofia

5/22/2018 08:37:22 pm

I think

Eknoor

5/22/2018 08:40:19 pm

@ Sofia - I'm still confused on what you mean by, "@Eknoor- all numbers below 10 are supposed to be written with letters."

Eknoor

5/22/2018 08:42:25 pm

@ Sofia - I had an english tutor and he said that any number can be written in letters except when it a lon number like 239,742.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 08:43:22 pm

(Edited)
@ Sofia - I had an english tutor and he said that any number can be written in letters except when it's a long number like 239,742.

Sofia

5/22/2018 08:47:22 pm

@Eknoor- idk... I just heard that all numbers 1-9 were to be written "one, two, three...etc", while numbers larger then that could be written in numeral form "10, 11, 12"

Kenton

5/22/2018 07:26:11 pm

Oof, my car ain't working!!! Me and my partner reassessed our mousetrap car several times. We struggled a lot at the beginning because of the design ideas. We changed our designs a lot to be able to actually beat the other groups and teams. We really had to think of an outstanding idea in order to win. 1 thing we did was to add gears to our car in order to decrease the mechanical advantage which would increase the distance that the car can travel. Another thing was to put two thin wood to make a slightly thicker and stronger one so it wouldn't immediately snap after I touch it. I also decided to add a middle to our gears so we could put the string through it. One thing that improved our vehicle was adding the middle to the gears. It really helps if I can actually put the string through it. Our main goal right now is to actually make it work... Yeah it'll really help if it works.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 07:33:57 pm

@ Kento - Get a more effective opening, the second sentence should be "My partner and I", in the sixth paragraph write 1 as one and take the "to" before the add out, and add an effective closing.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 07:36:37 pm

(Edited)

@ Kento - Get a more effective opening, the second sentence should be "My partner and I", in the sixth sentence write 1 as one and take the "to" before the add out, and add an effective closing.

Nicole

5/22/2018 08:09:51 pm

As you know, we've all been working on our mousetrap cars for the last little while. I'm working with Emily Z. Emily Z. and I's car works somewhat well, I guess. We've gone through trial and error a few times. We ended up changing our design plan three times. The first time, we had tinfoil around the frame of the car with the mousetrap on top. We realized that this wasn't sturdy because the tinfoil ripped causing the mousetrap to practically fall off. The way we changed our design was taking off the tinfoil. The next time, we had an issue with the stick being too weak to hold the string because it snapped. We replaced that stick with a sturdier stick. After we did this our mouse trap car performed a bit better. The final change we made in our design plan was using fishing wire instead of the string. This made our car go a lot faster and a bit further which made this the thing that improved our car the most. A problem Emily and I keep running into are the wheels falling off. I'm hoping they don't fall off during the competition thing. So yeah, that's basically what's been happening with my mousetrap car.

Sorry this is so bad. I don't think I even included the 'GOALS' thing.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 08:31:41 pm

@ Nicole - In the sentence, "I'm working with Emily Z. Emily Z. and I's car works somewhat well, I guess." you put Emily Z. twice and "I's" doesn't make sense

Sofia

5/22/2018 08:45:50 pm

@Nicole- As you mentioned yourself, you should add some goals of this project. In your third sentence, the start is pretty choppy. Maybe instead of saying "Emily Z and I's", you should say "Our". Other than that, I think that this is a pretty good paragraph! I just think you should add some transition words/sentences to make your whole paragraph flow a little better.

Jerry

5/22/2018 08:21:03 pm

How many times have you re-assessed your mousetrap car and changed your design plans?
Why did you change your design plans?
What are three things you did to your design to make it better? Explain.
Did it help you improve your mousetrap car? Explain.
What was the one thing that improved your mousetrap car the most?
What were some of the 'GOALS' of this project?
Use the standard paragaph format to complete your PAR.

Ray and I was really excited when we were told that we were doing mouse trap cars. We were really motivated and we changed out car a lot. The first change we did was adding another layer of Basel wood to our car because the car was really fragile. The next change we did was we cut open the middle to make it weight less. When we tested it then it went 10 meters. The third change we made was changing the wire from soft wire to fishing wire. The fourth change was because of an accident, the front of the car broke so we hot glued it and reinforced it with sticks. Then it broke again and it was wasted. So we decided to make another one. We don't know why, but this one didn't work. The three things that helped our dead car the most will easily be all the reinforcements we added. Since we used Basel wood our car was really fragile so we added extra sticks and parts of wood to the car. It made the car more stable and making it able to move. Some if the goals of this project for us is to get the long mouse award and have fun.

Eknoor

5/22/2018 08:39:31 pm

@ Jerry - Get an effective opening, in the first sentence write "was" as "were", in the second sentence write "out" as "our", rephrase the eleventh sentence " The three things that helped our dead car the most will easily be all the reinforcements we added." Also add an effective closing.

Naomi

5/22/2018 08:40:42 pm

So far, building mousetrap cars has been stressful, but also really fun. I’ve re-assessed my mousetrap car a couple time so far. Not the whole car, but my partner and I have replaced the car wheels a lot (and to be honest we’re still not completely satisfied). We changed the design for the wheels originally because the ones we made were too weak and were bending. After making some wheels out of cardboard though, we realized that they were actually pretty uneven, and bigger than the hole that we had already cut. So now we just have one small wheel for the front. I’m not really sure if it’s improved our mousetrap car, because we only tested it after attaching our final model of the wheel. It’s kind of hard to get a mousetrap car to roll while it’s missing a wheel… Since the wheels are the only things that we’ve really altered, that’s the thing that improved the car the most (hopefully). The goals for this project was to make either a car that looks cool, goes fast, goes far, or does all. I’m not sure that my car can do any of these, but it was make to go far (ish). I’m not sure that my car is going to do very well, but I had fun building it, anyways.

Stephanie

5/22/2018 09:12:18 pm

For the second sentence, read it over and try to restructure the sentence :)

Naomi

5/22/2018 09:51:04 pm

Edited:

So far, building mousetrap cars has been stressful, but also really fun. I’ve re-assessed my mousetrap car a couple times so far. Although my partner and I never had to change the frame of the car or the back wheels, but we did scrap-and-start-from-scratch the front wheels. We changed the design for the wheels originally because the ones we made were too weak and were bending. After making some wheels out of cardboard though, we realized that they were actually pretty uneven, and bigger than the hole that we had already cut. So now we just have one small wheel for the front. I’m not really sure if it’s improved our mousetrap car, because we only tested it after attaching our final model of the wheel. It’s kind of hard to get a mousetrap car to roll while it’s missing a wheel… Since the wheels are the only things that we’ve really altered, that’s the thing that improved the car the most (hopefully). The goals for this project was to make either a car that looks cool, goes fast, goes far, or does all. I’m not sure that my car can do any of these, but it was make to go far (ish). I’m not sure that my car is going to do very well, but I had fun building it, anyways.

May

5/22/2018 09:07:18 pm

So, mouse trap cars. They seem like a cool idea on paper but really it's pretty hard to make. (For me at least.) We had a project on building a mouse trap car and at first I wasn't really excited over the idea but at the near end, I was pretty okay with it. My partner and I first drew the layout of our car. (Well, my partner did.) From my knowledge we didn't really re-assess our design at all and or get any feedback. But we did change two of our wheels because they weren't really even and adjusted our fishing line. Doing those things really improved our car because if the wheels weren't even then our car would wobble a lot. I really feel like fixing the wheels was the most improved thing we could change. Now, every project has a goal, but for us we didn't really have one. It was more like just passing. But in the end, mouse trap cars is a cool project that anyone can do. They look simple enough but you can really learn something from it.
(Somewhat rushed..)

Stephanie

5/22/2018 09:22:50 pm

1. Mousetrap is one word
2. Instead of they, I think you could use 'it seems'
3. After 'really' on the second sentence I think you should add a comma
4. We are still doing this project so.. Instead of 'had' use present-tense
5.'Drew the layout of the car first'
6. Get rid of the 'and' for the feedback part
7, Get rid of the 'for us' if you want
Good job though :)

Stephanie

5/22/2018 09:25:35 pm

+Try to make an effective opening :)

Ethan

5/22/2018 09:10:51 pm

I don’t really know how many times we changed our design plans but we did it a lot because to us we didn’t think our design plan would work I think and we changed it before we even started it. We were going to put the 2 small LEGO pieces separate for the front wheels but we decided to put the them together to make 1 wheel and we were going to make the base of the car this skinny thing but then we changed it to cardboard. Also for the back wheels we were going to put a balloon around them but we didn’t do it later. We never actually tested to see if that helped are or not and we never tested it at all. 1 of our goals were to make a mousetrap car and win one of those awards like the fastest mousetrap car.

Stephanie

5/22/2018 09:32:22 pm

1. Try to make an effective opening and closing
2. The sentences seem like run-ons (add commas or make them new sentences)

Marina

5/22/2018 09:13:38 pm

I just learned something new: you can actually make a moving car using a mouse trap. Sounds super fun, but really it was stressful. My mouse trap car was not so great. A few of my designs didn't turn out to be what I expected. That's why I keep on changing and making improvements to my mouse trap car. The time was limited so now the car is still far behind from my expectation. There were a few things I changed, one is the wheel. I don't even remember how many times I've replace the wheels because it broke or was too weak. Second thing is the body structure, the sticks kept on breaking and i have to hot glue it again and again. To be honest I was pretty frustrated about it, but I'll still try my best. At the beginning my goal was maybe get the coolest design and the fastest speed. Now my goal is to just make the car move. I know right, big difference, but that's enough for me already.

Miles

5/23/2018 07:17:51 am

@Marina- I think you should try to change your closing sentence to something more effective. However you paragraph is pretty good overall.

5/22/2018 09:13:44 pm

As you all know, for science we’re making mousetrap cars. My partner for this assignment is Nicole. We had to reassess and change it about 3 times because it wouldn’t go as far as we desired it to be. Our goal is to go for the car to go the farthest distance even though we know we won’t win. One thing we change was the axel. Nicole and I remembered reading on an article that thickening the axel can help the car move faster. And we did. We wrapped duct tape around the axel which did help the car move a little faster. Another thing we changed was the lever. The lever snapped to we had to make a new one. We taped two sticks together so it can be stronger. So far, it’s working nicely. One last thing we changed was the string. We got rid of the string and changed it with fishing wire because Eric Zhu recommended it. The fishing wire was really helpful and helped our car move further. I think the fishing wire helped the car the most because it works better than the string. Overall, I think the car did pretty okay. Hopefully it’ll do well tomorrow.

Miles

5/23/2018 07:21:22 am

@Emily Z.- Use a more effective opening, and closing. Change "3" to "three" on the second line. Also make some of your sentences more lengthy, because I fee like you had mainly short sentences. And having a variation of lengths for sentences is always a good thing.

Sofia

5/22/2018 09:18:56 pm

Today, we worked on our mouse trap cars, yet again, during science. We're all preparing for tomorrow's race, hoping we'll be lucky enough to win a name in the competition. Naomi (my partner) and I have changed different components of our cars numerous times. We're still not sure what to do with some parts, and we're not happy with our current product yet. Hopefully tomorrow morning we can make some new changes that will be featured in our final copy. Of course, in the process of trial and error, we had to change out car many times. There was a main reason why we changed/added to our designs, and that was because they weren't strong enough. We added duct tape to strengthen some things, and to tape things that may have cracked back together. We also used hot glue to make sure the wheels wouldn't bend sideways, and the axel wouldn't shift around so much. When we strengthened it, I'm sure everything will work better, but the duct tape will also make the car heavier, so there are pros and cons to everything we did. The glue also made taping the duct tape (over it) really awkward, but these are smaller flaws. I think what we improved the most were the front wheels. It took us quite a while to find what we wanted to do for the front wheels. I don't think it's that great, but we have gone through three different sets of wheels to get here, so I think we'll only be focusing on making it look a bit better. Overall, the Goal we tried to achieve was to create a fully functioning mouse trap car using what we've learned in science.

Caden

5/22/2018 09:37:12 pm

Me and Roshin made a mouse trap car that was kind of garbage. So we only basically did 1 draft and just did a few minor changes. One of the changes that changed our results the most are that we changed the wheels. How did we change it? Well we changed the wheels from tape to disks which really helped because it was so slow. So that was one of the major changes.

Sorry that was a bit rushed because I had to go right after this and I also had to work on P.R. ^^

Miles

5/23/2018 07:22:47 am

@Caden- Use a more effective opening, and closing. And use more details in this paragraph. However I understand that you rushed to get this done.

Shermaine

5/22/2018 09:40:59 pm

When I first heard about working on the mousetrap cars I thought about doing a mouse inspired car. You know, because it’s a MOUSEtrap car and it would be ironic to do as a mouse. Doing a mouse inspired car isn’t exactly easy. I had to restart once but for my original copy I had to keep reconstructing it. I stuck with the same design plan the whole way through though. While reconstructing, I had adjust the axel and the wheels. The axel was to close to the back of the car so I wasn’t able to add the string. I also found that trying to find the right materials difficult. I was looking for specific things which didn’t exactly turn out the same way I expected. Reconstructing my car helped me quite a lot. The final copy was easy for me to finish only because I learned from my mistakes from the other one. I had to change the size and where I put certain things (like the axel), so that definitely helped me. I would say that the design worked well for the car. It turned out quite cute but it doesn’t really go far. ^~^;
I only had two goals for this car. For it to actually go and to look like a mouse/rat. That’s it. That’s all I wanted it to actually do. Oof, the competition thing is tomorrow. I’m not ready. I’m coming early... but that’s only if I wake up. :P

Miles

5/23/2018 07:28:00 am

@Shermaine- You should change "I had adjust the axel..." to "I had adjusted the axel...". I also feel like the sentence "Reconstructing my car helped me quite a lot.", doesn't really flow smoothly when you're going into the next sentence.

Aries

5/22/2018 09:50:59 pm

I think the mouse trap that I make with Kohane is a quite good mouse trap cause at least it can go quite far. I think we changed your design plans our mousetrap car for maybe around two time because at first we wanted to make it look more creative and look more pretty, but then we realize that the design is not the most important thing so we change our mind and make it to be more like simple. We did a lot of re-assessed because we found out that there are quite a lot of mistake, so we always check it and re-assessed. What we changed the design is that as I talked about just now, we made it more simple, because like we wanted to put some like different decorations on it, but we are scared that we had no times so we just make it less hard. We did something to improve our mousetrap. First thing we do is to put the tape all around the wheel, the second thing is put tape again beside the wheel, the last thing is to put a thin board on top of the card board. It did improve the mouse trap, how? So if we put the tape around the tape around wheel, when it spin it will be smooth. If we put the tape beside the wheel, it would move to other side. Lastly, it make the card board stronger if I put the small one on top. One thing that improved the most is the tape beside the wheel, it will spin, if it is not even moving, it wouldn't be a mousetrap car. I think the goals for this project is to use a mousetrap and make a mousetrap car. And also try to use the background knowledge we had and try to think of how it gonna work, and try to figure out how to let it go faster and farther.

Aries

5/22/2018 09:51:57 pm

On the second line should be our design instead of your.

Miles

5/23/2018 07:33:10 am

@Aries- Use a more effective opening and closing. The first sentence doesn't exactly make sense. So I think you should put "mouse trap" together because it's one word, and put "car" after any "mousetrap" in the first line. And you should change "make" on the first line into "made". Also add a comma before "cause", which should be changed into "because".

k duby

5/22/2018 09:52:37 pm

Okay we didn't change it. The goal of this project is to make a mousetrap car. The "thing" that helped the most is Mr.Hong and Mr.Fisher's advice. *cringe. Our car has 3 wheels. It is small. That is really all I can write.

Stephanie

5/22/2018 10:12:51 pm

Please have an effective opening and closing, and add more to this.

Stephanie

5/22/2018 10:23:32 pm

When you think of a mousetrap, you probably think of the snapping thing that kills rodents. That's technically right, but you could do so much more with it. This time for our science project, we use the force of mousetraps to power our cars that we made. I am partners with Eknoor and I'm actually quite sorry.. I feel like I didn't focus as much as I should've in previous periods. I think I improved a lot today though. We changed the tires a bit so they wouldn't be touching the car itself. Although it didn't work, it would've been amazing if it did work. Our car turned out pretty well. I actually feel quite proud of it. In my opinion, we could always aim for higher but this car is good enough for our first try. If there's a second one (I don't think so) I think we could create a better one using our previous background knowledge.

(Sorry I rushed this ;-;)

Miles

5/23/2018 07:36:37 am

@Stephanie- Put "Although" before "I think I improved a lot today.", and use a more effective closing.

Miles

5/23/2018 07:37:53 am

The reason you should put "Although" is because it makes the sentence flow smoother.

Eknoor

5/23/2018 07:40:40 am

@ Stephanie - Good opening but it can be more effective. Also go back to the required points for this P.A.R. You are missing a few.

PS - You were really helpful. You made the design plan and came up with solutions when our car wasn't working. Best partner ever.

Millie

5/22/2018 10:42:29 pm

We changed our car a lot, but we never actually re-designed it. Outher than the look, we first changed the size, because it was too large, then we had to completely re imagine the top because the moustrap could't wind up inside. Then we changed the top again becaus it was causing problems. We just made it open topped. At one point we also re cut our wood to make it look better, and continued to make changes throughout to improve, fix, and learn.

Miles

5/23/2018 07:39:31 am

@Emily- Change "Ouhter" to "Other" on the first line. And use a more effective opening, and closing.

Jessica L.

5/22/2018 10:56:51 pm

For the past couple weeks, we have been building mousetrap cars. What are mousetrap cars? Well, they’re small and light cars that are powered by a mousetrap. When we first built our mousetrap car, there were many design problems. The first one that we fixed was that our car was too fragile, so I made supports out of popsicle sticks. The second thing that we noticed was that the roof of our car was too low for the mousetrap. Therefore, we cut almost the whole roof off. After that, we tried to test it out, but it didn’t have enough traction, so the wheels slipped. To improve the traction, I bought balloons and cut strips to glue on the wheels. Then, I increased the diameter of the axel, which increases the torque, and increases the speed and power of the mousetrap car. All in all, I think that there are many different goals you can accomplish. One of the goals is to make our car go faster and further. However, I think that the main goal is to learn through trial and error, and to continuously improve on things because there is always something to improve in. For example, I can make my car four wheel drive next time. The most important part I learned from this project is how to transfer energy from one thing to another.

Vivian

5/22/2018 11:00:18 pm

Mousetrap cars. Never heard of them? Don't worry, I haven't either until now. My trio group was Queenie and Camila and I. We have sketched out our cars design first labeling what we're going to use for certain parts but later changed it because of material use. We didn't restart, we took some of our car parts out and tried to redo it to make it better. So, a couple of times. We changed our plans because we couldn't et materials on time and we had to rely on the things we could use at school. When we first got our wheels (CD's) we used them as our back wheels. When we tried to test out how well it worked it was flimsy and wasn't straight. What we did to make that better was adding tape to the outer rims and "gluing" the CD's to the stick. At first I thought that the wheels wouldn't move because it was glued. I glued cut up straw pieces to the base of the car and put the stick with wheels on it so they could spin. For the axle of our car we used fishing line and not string because it's thinner and actual rope wouldn't loop through. All of this did help improve our car a lot because at first we weren't sure of what we were doing honestly. We took some feedback from people and it really helped us a lot. I think the wheel idea was the most important. Without it our car wouldn't legitimately spin and be as flimsy. Overall I think my groups goal or all the groups' goal is to make a mousetrap car using our knowledge from what we learned through this project.
(this was rushed)

Jessica L.

5/22/2018 11:09:22 pm

@ Everyone:

The PAC is going to organize the Grade 7 grad celebration at the end of the year. They need both the hard copies and digital copies of the baby photos. The digital copies go on the slideshow and the hard copies are going to be hung on the wall of the gym.

Kohane

5/22/2018 11:38:12 pm

My partner for this project is Aries. I think we made a pretty good mousetrap car since we don’t really have background knowledge on building things. We got a lot of help from Mr. Hong and he also gave us lots of feedback, it helped a lot. I don’t think we wouldn’t have gone this far without Mr. Hong’s help, so thank you! Anyway, Aries and I, we re-assessed our mousetrap car around 2-3 times. At first we thought that the more creative the better, but after we looked it over we realized it was quite complicated. So we decided to make a simpler one and just design it from there. The three things we did to make our design better was first, like I said we made it simpler. This just made everything easier and can think in a simple way and doesn’t have to think too complicated or too much about the mousetrap car. Secondly, we glued some wood on the mousetrap car. We glued some wood on the weak parts like where the base cardboard bends over. Lastly, we taped around the wheels. We taped around to make it smoother when it runs. To make friction. One thing that really improve our mousetrap car is when we glued our wheels. At first we didn’t glue the wheels to the axle so when we tried out our car, it went to the side a lot and wasn’t really stable. We only taped the side of the wheels but on the axles so didn’t actually tape the wheels itself. But the car itself did work, it’s just the wheels weren’t stable enough. Overall, I actually did enjoy this project, at least more than when they first introduced the project. Our end product of our mousetrap car was a basic, classic design. It didn’t go that far but went pretty fast. I was excited for the end product of our mousetrap car.

Eknoor

5/23/2018 07:52:19 am

@ Kohane - Overall, most of it was good but you still might want to go back and edit some stuff. Get a more exciting beginning, in the thirteenth sentence write "improve" as "improved" and "is" as "was", in the sixteenth sentence take the "But" out and just start with "The", try to rephrase the seventeenth sentence because it's kinda brutal, and just get a better closing.

Miles

5/23/2018 07:48:10 am

When someone says the word "Car", what do you think of? For me I think of the gas spewing cars that cover the roads of Vancouver. However in science we learned about something called a "Mousetrap Car". So we making a mousetrap car as our project. And to be honest it's a lot harder then it seems, because our objective in this project is to have your car go far, and fast. But in the end, a lot of other group's cars barely moved two centimetres. Since that was the case with our groups car as well, we had to make changes. One of those changes was our wheels. For a while we didn't have wheels because no one was bringing the disks. So for the time being we had to resort to cardboard as out back wheels until the time comes. Once we had disks, we changed the back wheels to disks. And then we made out front wheels smaller cardboard wheels. And that's about all we changed, the back and front wheels.

Miles

5/23/2018 07:48:46 am

It was rushed, sorry.

Comments are closed.

PROTOTYPE TO WORKING MODEL

About Us

Archives

Categories

Mr. Hong's Web 2.0 Tools