What it is?
This project we had to build a catapult that could launch a projectile a certain distance. It could have anything on it to help the projectile to go or the projectile could be anything thrown off the catapult. The distance the projectile needed to travel was 20m.
What we did
My group and I decided to make a catapult that had a PVC pipe going through the middle of it and two tall legs with one big arm to shoot the projectile. We put some clay in between the PVC pipe to prevent wood on wood friction. After are catapult didn’t succeed at first, we then made 8 adjustment to our catapult to help the projectile to go further. We changed our trebuchet by changing the mass of our ball, changing the length of our string, have a stronger base and legs, tying 5 tied rubber bands, adding a tither hole for the PVC pipe, adding a stopper, and having a nail at the end of the arm to hold the rubber bands.
Reflection
.Going into this I knew it was t going to be an easy project. My group helped me a lot through the building process and supported me through the entire thing. I learned that when there are multiple choices in a situation that you need to try all of them even if they don’t make sense to you. I feel that I improved on group skills and using power tools. I feel that I could have worked on sticking to one thing at a time and the physics side of the project. I am glad that I learned some of the physics involved in the project and look forward to learning more. For me I used skills such as perseverance and hard work to get through the hard part of the project. For the future I plan on adding more on the physics part and I intend on doing that by including myself more in the conversation and trying to do it. I also used brainstorming and my thought to add in to the conversation and I plan on using that as well.