Making crafts is one of the most productive ways of spending time and using useless or used stuff found in the house. This activity opens up our mind, enhances our motor skills and improves creativity.

There are many things lying in the house that can be reused, one of the things that I think most of us hardly pay attention to happen to be rubber bands. Yes, rubber bands are far more useful than we can imagine. Apart from their usefulness, have you ever thought that rubber bands can be a fun way to learn about physics and engineering? If not, let’s make a little car from plastic bottle caps, powered by a rubber band.

Let’s start!

Things you need:

1. One drinking straw
2. Two craft sticks (any size)
3. Four plastic bottle caps (same-sized)
4. Five rubber bands (one large and four small)
5. Bamboo stick or barbecue skewer
6. Hot glue gun
7. Scissors

Directions:

1.) Paste craft sticks in triangular shape, picture 2.

2.) Cut a piece of skewer at one inch and paste it in the middle of the craft sticks on top, picture 3.

3.) Paste a piece of craft stick behind the skewer with hot glue, this secures both the skewer piece and the craft sticks. So when you pull the rubber, it won’t come off, picture 4.

To give a neat look, I pasted a small piece from a foam sheet of the same colour on top of the skewer.

4.) Cut drinking straw according to the gaps between the craft sticks at the bottom, mine was four inches and three inches at the top, see picture 5.

5.) Cut the skewer an inch larger than both the straw pieces, these are the axles of the car. Then paste the straw on their respective places on the craft sticks, notice the axles are larger than the drinking straw, (for the car to move smooth), picture 6.

6.) Paste one end of the skewer or ‘axle’ in the middle of a bottle cap with the help of hot glue, picture 7.

7.) Now insert this axle in the straw, then paste the other end of the axle to the second bottle cap. Repeat on all four caps in the same way, picture 8.

8.) Cut the middle part of the drinking straw (we used at the bottom), leaving only an inch from right and left side, picture 9.

9.) Now paste a piece of skewer in the middle of the axle at the bottom, picture 10.

10.) Take the large rubber band, and loop itself around the piece of skewer on the top; then paste the band to prevent it from slipping, see picture 11.

11.) Pull the band to the other piece of skewer at the bottom, and loop around it again, hold it tight, picture 12.

12.) The idea is that when the skewer rotates, the rubber band should also rotate with it.

13.) The rubber band powered car is ready, but to give the wheels some grip, tie small rubber bands, two on each cap ‘only’ at the bottom. Picture 13.

14.) Voila! The car is ready, put it down, pull the rubber, rotate it backwards slowly, release the car and see how fast it goes forward!

The writer can be contacted at ithecraftman@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, Young World, June 11th, 2022