Final Trebuchet Blog P ost

    With this trebuchet project, our groups biggest problem was being able to find time that we could all work on it, however, we managed to find a couple of afternoons and weeknights that we could work on it. The rest of the project went quite well with a few minor problems along the way that were fixed. One problem we encountered included.

 Tips that I would recommend for future students with building their trebuchet include:
   -Be sure to have a strong and steady frame to support the counterweight.
    -Do not use a fixed counterweight.
    -Start building it early, it takes a long time to build.
    -Make a good pouch
    -Keep it simple

Competition Reflection

    In summary, our trebuchet worked quite well. It hurled the tennis ball well over 25m and also was  relatively close to the hula hoop. If we were to modify our current trebuchet, we would design it so that the counterweight was not fixed, this would have made it easier to control the distance for the accuracy competition. Instead of just using two 25lb weights we could have used more smaller weights so that the counterweight could easily be changed.

The black bungee cords were used to slow down the throwing arm for the accuracy part of the competion.

Competition Day!

Our trebuchet had the following ranges for the distance: 51.69m, 50.99m, 52.11m, 50.29m, and 51.00m. The average of these ranges is 51.22m. The theoretical range for our trebuchet was 262.6m.

Five reasons why our trebuchet does not throw the tennis ball include:
1) Air resistance is not considered when calculating theoretical distance, however,  there is obviously some air resistance acting on the tennis ball.
2) Throwing arm length is also not included when calculating theoretical distance, if the throwing arm is longer, the ball will be thrown farther.
3) Also the release mechanism could affect the distance that the tennis ball is thrown. The pouch may not have released the pouch properly and therefor decreased the range of the tennis ball.
4) The fourth reason why the theoretical distance was not reached could be because of the object being thrown, for example a golf ball would be thrown farther than a tennis ball.
5) A final reason why the theoretical range was not reached may be the angle of release, if the degree of the angle is greater or less than 45 degrees, the distance thrown will be decreased.

Test Day Blog Post

Our groups test day went quite well. We were able to throw the tennis ball approximately 60m, however, we did have a very strong wind helping us. The trebuchet still needs to be adjusted to throw 15m for the accuracy competition. To do this, we are considering shortening the throwing arm, or attaching bungee cords to slow down the motion of the arm.

Paper Trebuchet

 In this trebuchet, physics principles include projection, trajectory, and gravity. Environmental factors that affect the trebuchet include gravity and  air resistance, these factors can not be altered. Performance factors include the mass of the counterwieght, arm length, and the angle of release. These performance factors can be altered to give the best results for the trebuchet.

Fernie and Physics!

 While in Fernie, there were many rules of physics that we encountered on the mountain. One would be the velocity going down a run. The velocity gained while going down the hill depended on the slope of the hill, the friction between the snowboard and the snow, and the turns that are made going down the hill. Friction played a major roll because on days when the snow was slushie my board stuck a whole lot more and on days when the snow was more like powder, my board would barely stick at all.

Nuclear Physics Project

For this project, I am in a team with Jordan Heaman and Jonathon Lesyk. We will be researching the topic of magnetic resonance imaging. We have split up the research between us as follows:

Jonathon: Brief historical infomation and description how the technology works.
Jordan: Background information and the reason why we selected this application.
Myself: Potential future applications and interesting facts

Ready for the drop!



Egg Drop

On competition day, our container worked and the egg did not crack. However, the box did not land on the right side but the egg still did not crack from the five meter fall. When building our container, the restriction we found the hardest to work around was the size limitation. It was tempting to make the container larger in order to add more padding to help cushion the egg.

The most effective part of the design was the smaller box inside the larger box. We did this because when the outside box hits the ground, the inside box can still move a bit and cushion the impact of hitting the ground.

If we were able to change our design, we would change that the box had to land on a certain side. The egg did not break when the box landed on the right side but we did not know for sure that it would not.
If two raw eggs were to be carried by the container, we would put two of the smaller boxes inside the larger box. This would still allow for the padding and cushion but would hold two eggs instead of only one.

Egg Drop Test Day

Yesterday was the test day for the egg drop challenge. Our container for the egg consists of styrofoam bowls lined with cotton balls that is inside a cardboard box with padding in the bottom of the box. The padding in the bottom of the box helps cushion the styrofoam bowls when the box hits the floor. On test day the egg did not crack the first time but did crack on the second drop. However, on the second drop the box hit the railings on the way down the stairwell and did not land on the right side. Some changes we might make include adding more padding to the outside of the container. 

Day 2

We started off today's class with a video expressing the dangers of posting content online. Then, followed the steps to add the location gadget to our blog. With this gadget we are able to see how many views our blog receives and the location where it was viewed. We continued to finish up our blogs and are now going to learn how to comment on other classmates blogs.

Today in physics class, we spent the period setting up and experimenting with our blogs. We added gadgets which had to include followers, archive, and then any others that we preferred such as a calendar. Then we spent the rest of the class visiting other classmates blogs and setting it up so we are following them.