The Catapult Project

Wow! What a relief. For the past few weeks, I have been working with my fellow lab table mates on a catapult. This was quite the project. We had to consider many different forces and laws to make sure our catapult would, first of all, actually work when made of popsicle sticks, and secondly, launch farther than one meter. We were able to launch our catapult more than one meter, but the process to get there was very difficult.

When first starting, we drew out our catapult. I used a design I found from stormthecastle.com, a site which I found some very creative designs. I chose a triangle shaped catapult for it looked the simplest and easiest to change if something went wrong. After beginning, our group decided to build a platform for our catapult and also make the arm longer so the golf ball we were launching would go farther. Next, we agreed on making our angle of launch at about 47˚ because, when we were practice launching, that gave us the best distance. We also knew gravity, which would affect the golf ball's inertia, would be a pretty big factor, so we used a lot of tension force (all rubber bands) to get our arm to launch fast, which also increased the acceleration of the golf ball, therefore causing it to launch farther. Although we could not control the mass of the golf ball we used, we made sure that the force on the golf ball was great so, again, the golf ball would be able to accelerate. Finally, we made sure to hold our catapult down when shooting so it would not come back and crack the popsicle sticks holding the arm straight.

My whole group really enjoyed this project, and if anyone ever has some free time, I would definitely try making a catapult. It is fun and really helps you realize how forces affect real life!

Our Catapult!