Trebuchet Challenge Recommendations

During the process of building our trebuchet a lot of things actually went wrong for me and my partner. During test day our trebuchet threw our tennis ball nowhere. It would throw it straight down or the tennis ball would stay in the pouch. After a few frustrating days we finally got it to work when it had to. The things that went well for us would be that our trebuchet performed when it needed to.

Some tips for future students would be to use a denim material for your pouch not a cloth material because the cloth will wrap around the tennis ball and not let it go. Also use strong wood because you don't want your trebuchet falling apart.

Trebuchet Challenge

In the accuracy part of the challenge our trebuchet performed extremely well. For our first throw we put most of our weights on and the ball hurled past the target and to the left of it. For our second throw we took some weight off and aimed it in the same position, our result was the correct distance but a bit to the left again. For our third throw we kept the same weight on the trebuchet but aimed it to the right. Our result was just about perfect as the ball landed 48.5cm away from the middle of the target.

Our trebuchet in action during accuracy competition

If I wanted to design our trebuchet differently I would change it to make the throwing arm lighter. I feel if the throwing arm is lighter it would get more speed and therefore throwing the ball farther.

If I were to make a whole new trebuchet I would make it out of steel because steel is more reliable and stronger than wood. I would also make it so that the throwing arm would be longer and lighter. 

Cardboard Trebuchet Challenge

Here is a video of our trebuchet in action.

Cardboard Trebuchet Challenge

In physics we built a mini cardboard trebuchet to give us an idea on how to build the big wooden trebuchets. To make our cardboard trebuchet work at its best we had to use our physics knowledge. We had to use our balancing concepts (with the weights) and our trajectory concepts (make sure the trebuchet launched at 45 degrees), by doing these concepts we got our trebuchet to perform at its best.

Some environmental factors are that the glue may not have settled correctly and made the trebuchet unstable or the string may have weakened through the gluing process.

Some performance factors are the launch angle of the trebuchet and the amount of weights we put on for the counterweight.