Mel McDaniel and Dr. Roy Rubins from the Physics Department at The University of Texas at Arlington, unveiling the world's largest mousetrap in Cleburne, Texas, in February 1997. This mousetrap was featured in the 1998 edition of the Guiness Book Of World Records.
Mel had the famous model maker, Joseph Melancon build it for him.
Fully functional? You had better believe
it! This is a mouses' worst nightmare.
Check out the following comparison in size between an ordinary mousetrap and the world's largest mousetrap...amazing!
The
dimensions of the world's largest mouse trap are:
Length = Six feet and four inches
Width = Thirty five and a quarter inches
Thickness / depth = Four and one eighth of an inch
The
dimensions of an ordinary spring loaded mouse trap are:
Length = Three and seven eighths of an inch
Width = One and thirteen sixteenths of an inch
Thickness / depth = One quarter of an inch
CHECK THIS OUT: It means that it would
take about 13,497 small mouse traps to build a giant of the above
mentioned dimensions.
Why build a 6 foot mouse trap?
Since mid June 1996, Mel Mc Daniel (AKA "Prof. M Claude") had been running several mouse trap science workshops with schools. He then decided that because of the growing interest in the project, it would be a great idea to build the first ever, giant mouse trap. This he said, "would be a tremendous visual aid to catch the attention of young budding scientists all over".
Mel, a Cleburne businessman, said "any teacher worth their salt, knows that one of the first objectives in teaching is to get the student's attention and then to hold their attention long enough for the lesson to sink in. So the giant mouse trap has and continues to serve its purpose rather well. The widespread interest and has certainly revived the "sense of WOW" that is at the heart of any fun learning experience".
A dangerous undertaking!
You can well imagine the problems involved in trying to design and build something of this size, and still have it as a fully functional mouse trap. Scaling something up to these colossal proportions not only poses a terrific danger, but would inevitably self distruct when it was set off. Nothing of this size was ever built before and this made the task even more daunting.
The giant mouse trap will eventually be housed in a museum in the great metropolis of Cleburne. Along with this colossus, Mel plans to display a variety of mouse traps from around the world, together with all of the mouse trap "con-trap-tions" he has made so far. One of the other exciting features of this museum would be is that it would also become a special home (a kind of hall of fame) for mouse trap models from other "en-trap-preneurs" from all over.
A New World Record
We are very proud to announce that The Guinness
Book of World Records® has featured our giant mouse trap along with great pictures
on page 8, of their 1998 edition. A new world record was set by a class of vo-tech
students and their teacher in Lisbon, Ohio.