Rubber Band Car

This is one for the older kids as it’s quite tricky! The idea is that you use the energy in an elastic band to make the car go – ours didn’t quite work however and definitely needs some tweaking!

We used:

An old ketchup bottle

Skewers

Bottle lids

Elastic bands

A sharp knife

We cut one side off a ketchup bottle. We then pierced 4 holes in the bottle, two on each side. It was tricky to get the placement right – too high and your wheels won’t touch the floor, too low and your wheels will be too low! We then

pushed a skewer through one of the back holes. An elastic band was then tied around the skewer before pushing the other end of the skewer through the other side. The second skewer was then pushed through one of the front holes and the elastic band from the first skewer was looped around it. The skewer was then pushed through the other side. We then made holes in 4 bottle caps, a little above the mid point. The bottle caps were then attached to the skewers and the skewers cut to the right length. We added a rubber band to each bottle cap to help with grip.

To make your car move you turn the axles (skewers) to wind up the rubber band, pulling it quite tight. In theory, when you let go, the car moves forward as the elastic band unwinds. Our car didn’t move far however and the elastic band didn’t totally unwind so we definitely have some room for improvement here!

If we have more success I’ll be sure to update this post with the results!