Congratulations to this year’s Mousetrap Race Car Challenge winners: Middle School – Coles’ Advisory (pictured below) and Upper School – D’Eramo’s and DeRuyter’s Advisories! This annual advisory competition put students’ engineering skills, creativity, and teamwork to the test in a fun and highly engaging way.
From a science and engineering perspective, the challenge introduced students to key concepts in physics and design, including energy transfer, force, motion, friction, torque, and momentum. Using only the energy released from a mousetrap, students had to carefully design a car that could travel forward 10 feet, stop, and then roll backward—a task that required thoughtful planning, trial and error, and an understanding of how stored potential energy converts into kinetic energy. Materials such as CDs, cardboard, rubber bands, and plenty of duct tape became tools for experimentation, allowing students to test hypotheses, analyze failures, and refine their designs through the engineering design process.
Equally important, the project highlighted the value of collaboration and teamwork. Working in advisory groups, students practiced communication, problem-solving, leadership, and compromise, learning how to divide tasks, listen to different ideas, and adapt when designs didn’t work as planned. Team members relied on one another’s strengths and learned that persistence and cooperation are just as critical as technical skill. These experiences mirror real-world engineering and scientific work, where innovation depends on collaboration and shared responsibility.
In addition to performance, creativity took center stage in the Mousetrap Car Beauty Contest, where advisories showcased their artistic flair. Coles’ Advisory swept the Middle School competition by earning top honors in both speed and design, while Sra. Hutchins’ advisory claimed the Upper School beauty title with their sleek “All Black Ratclaren” car. Together, the competition celebrated not only STEM learning, but also creativity, teamwork, and Panther pride.
