The two types of friction that affect the performance of my mousetrap car are rolling friction and static friction A problem that I ran into related to friction was that the CDs are used for wheels didn t have enough traction and they made too much friction with the floor to solve this problem I cut up four balloons and taped them to my tires so they would have more traction Another problem related to friction was getting my mousetrap car to even start moving I had to figure out how to overcome the static friction acting on my car Just saw this problem I had to rebuild my car I lengthened the body added a longer lever arm and more string This added more force and torque to my car I chose four wheels for my car because I was afraid it would be off centered and unbalanced if I only used three Plus I wanted to attach a string on the lever arm in the middle of the two front wheels on the axle If I used three wheels two in the back one in the front the string would have to be attached to one side of the front wheel not in the middle I used CDs with balloons wrapped around the outside of them on each axle Larger wheels can travel farther distances each time they turn Although larger wheels take more power and torque to keep them turning Smaller wheels will accelerate quicker than larger wheels but they won t travel as far each time they turn Newton's first law applies to the performance of my vehicle because since my mousetrap car has inertia it will follow Newton's first law
