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.