8th-Graders Charged To Build Best-Moving Mousetrap

Aleks Zbikowski said he can’t wait. He’s about to put the 45 robotics classes he took this school year to good use. He and his fellow middle-schoolers will compete against one another to create a car using high-technology and old-fashion science that goes the farthest and fastest.

A mousetrap will be their engine. Like the Flintstones‘ foot-powered vehicle, there will be no batteries or electrical wires. Just a spring, levers, a piece of string and Isaac Newton‘s laws.

The students got their marching orders Thursday afternoon from Marilee Noonan, the district science coordinator. They've been preparing for the challenge all school year, but didn’t know it until recently.

Neither did Noonan, at first.

Last year, she and assistant school Superintendent Erica Forti applied for a $140,000 state technology grant to incorporate the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) program into the curriculum. The one-time grant came through. The idea to turn the new educational application into a competition came later on, said Forti.

Noonan told the students in the middle school auditorium how learning the skills needed to compete is critical to them. She said in 10 years, 70 percent of jobs will be STEM-related.

“East Haven is leading the way to prepare you for a solid STEM education,” she said.

The $140,000 went to setting up a STEM lab at the middle school and purchasing 16 interactive whiteboards, two laptop carts and enough materials to make the mouse cars. All sixth- through eighth-graders from Joseph Melillo Middle School and East Haven Academy will contend, one grade at a time. Aleks, an Academy student, and his eighth-grade peers from both schools are up first.

About 100 three-student teams will have two weeks, starting today, to build, test and sketch their cars. Then the seventh grade goes followed two weeks later by the sixth grade.

First step is watching instructional videos on how to build the cars on the education website Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment).

The car design is up to the children’s imaginations but the mechanics are not, said Jan Staires, Academy science teacher. She said an open mousetrap is secured in the middle of the car with a spring and levers. CDs are the wheels. To propel the contraption, a string is tied to the trap and the other end to a wheel. The trap is closed, the string is pulled and the buggy moves forward.

After the mousetrap vehicles are built and tested, students draft a digital design of their inventions on Google SketchUp. Then it‘s off to the elimination round. Teachers and principals, acting as judges, will choose 12 of the 100 or so teams to go on to the finals on May 19 at the high school. Ultimately, four groups will win in one of the four categories: most creative, fastest, longest distance traveled and most accurate Sketchup drawing.

“They’re very excited they’ll be working in teams and competing against each other,” said Staires.

Aleks, who wants to be an aeronautical engineer, said with confidence, “I expect to win.”