January 29, 2009
Trapsters — dragsters built using mousetraps — race at School of Art
Students in Magnus Feil’s industrial design classes built mousetrap-powered cars, called them trapsters, and raced them last Wednesday — and the world beat a path to their door.
Well, OK, not quite the world, but the School of Art second floor hallway sure was crowded with people when Feil’s juniors and seniors threw down for their quarter-ending race. Video cameras whirred and cameras flashed as Feil, assistant professor of art, acted as master of ceremonies.
“Welcome to the first annual Trapster Race!” he announced to scattered hoots and applause. “For those of you who don’t know what a trapster is, it’s a mix between a dragster and a mousetrap.
“The rules are really, really simple. Basically you build a car that goes kind of straight and uses mousetraps to propel it. I didn’t give any limits on how many mousetraps can be used and I realize lots of you made use of that loophole.”
Indeed they did. One car had eight mousetraps lined up to provide power, four on each side. Feil had required the students to make their own wheels, though CDs were allowable. Trapster wheels were fashioned from Styrofoam, wood and plastic, with one racer even using old record albums to roll his creation along.
“It’s a trade-off,” Feil said earlier as he discussed the race to come. “If they make it very light-weight it might not have the necessary weight to get traction, so they start experimenting with wheel sizes. Bigger wheels mean more traction but they are slower.”
Two classes were combined for the competition — Art 317, the intermediate industrial design studio, and Art 447, the advanced course. The project was fun, but it also satisfied the academic needs of the classes, which go beyond simple design to consider — according to class descriptions — the “psychological, sociological, and economic factors involved in designing for consumer acceptance.”
The track was 10 yards of hallway, and cars were “out” if they touched the wall. Feil had three categories — speed, endurance and style. “Those cars have to move, not just look good,” he said.
Back at the race, Feil called out, “Wind up your engines and watch your fingers!” And the races began.
Some sprang forward and others crawled. Some sped forward, some cruised smoothly and some slowly inched their way to the finish line. One student called out, “Got some WD40?” as he tried to make last-minute adjustments to his racer.
The winners of each heat competed, drag race-style, for the next heat until all races had been run. Students Ben Guthrie and Brian McAllister won for speed, Dana Badeen’s racer prevailed in the endurance category and Eli Stillson’s trapster won the style award.
Feil said he’d like to make his trapster races an annual event, “with as many students from as many different fields as possible and teams that are mixed up, so that architects can learn from designers, and vice versa.”
But that’s all for trapster races yet to come. He started conservatively this year, he said. “These are our guinea pigs.”
