Our car lost to Austin Zhu's car.
Unfortunately, when our car was released, it went sideways instead of forwards and up the ramp. We were easily defeated because our car never made it up the hill in the first place, and the competing car did. When we collided, the opposing care was already over the top of the ramp, and just further proved how badly our car was running. Their velocity was much greater than ours because we lost energy to colliding with the side of the ramp, and our displacement was not in the right direction, while theirs was much greater.
The mass of our car was a good one, solidly built but light enough to pick up speed. Our problem was that the wheels were not very sturdy, and when they broke, the car ran the wrong way. Our mass was also less than that of our opponent's, and that affected us when they collided with our smaller car by doing more damage to our car, because the force of the opponents on us was much greater than our force on them due to mass differences. The friction on our wheels was sufficient, in fact superior to our opponents, who used duct tape while we used rubber bands. This didn't help us, however, because all the nice friction we had just propelled us into the wall better. The momentum of our car was also useless because all the momentum that was supposed to be driven into the opponent got driven into the wall, making our car lose energy and ultimately fail to make it up the ramp.
I was very disappointed in this result because I had worked very hard to screw the wheels of the car into the axles, and the wheels ended up breaking anyways. The wheels were our downfall, and I honestly am sad that the project crashed and burned the way it did.
