Force and Motion

To fire it, the spoke or arm was forced down, against the tension of twisted ropes or other springs, by a windlass, and then suddenly released. As the sling swung outwards, one end would release, as with a staff-sling, and the projectile would be hurled forward. The arm would then be caught by a padded beam or bed, when it could be winched back again. The Onager is usually the first type of catapult

The catapult is a machine that launches an object into the air by using sudden tension. When people launched catapults, the object that was launched forms a parabola to hit the target otherwise known as a projectile. There are forces that act upon the object such as gravity and initial velocity. To calculate where the object lands, people use the vertex form and the quadratic formula. The vertex form is y = a(x – h)2 + k in which a is equal to the slope of the parabola, h is equal to half of the x value and k is equal to the y value of the maximum point. Also, people can find the farthest distance where an object could land by using the quadratic formula. Therefore, vertex form and quadratic formula are used to determine the path of the catapult’s

We can look at the catapult as a lever which is meant to change direction and/or multiply the force that is applied to the projectile. A lever has three locations: the fulcrum, on which the lever arm rotates; the load, where the mass is located on the lever arm; and the effort, where the force, a push or pull, is applied (Vogel 178). It is meant to throw an object a certain horizontal distance in a certain, short time frame so that its impact would be greater than just a human hurling a giant rock at a building. We might intrinsically know this. “Probably no mechanical device is older than the lever; simple and versatile, it’s no doubt older than we humans,” mentions Steve Vogel in Cat’s Paws and Catapults (Vogel 178). If a larger kid jumps from a tree onto a seesaw with a smaller child will be launched into the air. The physics principals that govern the catapult also govern force, mass, speed and acceleration, rotational motion, and projectile motion. From these principals we find out what the optimum projectile mass, lever arm length, time, and launch angle which would produce optimum speed, impact, and horizontal distance traveled by the projectile.

In this experiment we tested the effect of change in arm length of the Trebuchet on the distance traveled of the projectile. We wanted to do this experiment due to our interests in engineering and our interests in the medieval era siege weaponry. We started by researching different types of Trebuchets and decided to go with the most modular and modern version. We decided to build a floating arm Trebuchet which uses the counterweight as the fulcrum. This allowed us to easily exchange the arms for testing. We built the Trebuchet using long 5.08cm x 10.16cm (2in x 4in) pieces of wood, four 4.54kg (10lb) weights, a single 1.27cm (1/2in) x 1.22m (4ft) piece of rebar, and a pouch made of paracord and duct tap. We tested this by building a Trebuchet

“Whoosh!” went the marshmallow as it flung out of the catapult and through the air. In this paragraph I will explain three main processes we went through while doing our catapult project. First, we built catapults out of popsicle sticks and rubber bands, this process was hard and took a while. We had to wrap the rubber bands around each popsicle stick to connect them, then we had to hot glue a cap to the top to hold the marshmallow that we would launch. Next, when the catapult was finally built we were ready to start the tests. We first calculated the distance the marshmallow would go when we launched it using one rubber band, then two, and then three. I noticed that with one rubber band the marshmallow didn’t go very far, then with two rubber bands it seemed to go three times as far as one. Lastly, we tested the accuracy of our catapult.

Did you know that various types of catapults were used by the Greeks, Romans, and Chinese? We took various different steps to construct our catapult and see how we can improve it. First, the catapult we made was made out of 11 popsicle sticks for the base and construction of the catapult and 26 rubber bands to hold them in place. The model of my catapult collapsed easily and fell apart. I believe that if we put in more time and work into the catapult it would’ve done wonders. Second, our catapult was tested for accuracy but sadly started collapsing downward and was lopsided. The catapult made 30% of the shots we fired into a platform that was 100 centimeters away, it made no shots that were fired into a platform that was 150 centimeters away,

Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion are three physical laws that made the foundation for modern mechanics. They describe the relationship between the body and the forces upon it, and it’s response to the motion. Sir Isaac Newton was one of the greatest scientists and mathematicians that ever lived, born in England on December 25, 1643, the same year that Galileo died. He went to Trinity college in Cambridge. While he was in college, Newton had new ideas about motion, which he called Newton’s three laws of motion. He also had ideas about gravity, the diffraction of light, and forces. His ideas were so great that in 1705, Queen Anne knighted him. What Newton’s three laws of motion, and what did they do? Newton’s laws made the foundation for modern science and changed the world.

Have you ever wondered how a catapult works? We had to ask just that question when we were assigned a project. Where we had to create a functional catapult and graph the arc of the object shot from the catapult we created. In this essay I will discuss the history and mathematical concepts behind catapults. I will also include some fun facts.

There are two main types of energy that take effect on the catapult for it to work. The first one is Potential energy. When you pull the fork back the rubber bands are storing Potential Energy. The second energy is that helps is Kinetic Energy. When you let go of the fork the Potential Energy is transformed to Kinetic Energy. This is because when you let go the object will move because energy due to motion.

“The Jim” is built from various wood planks, screws, eye hooks, bungee cords, and a copper pipe. The base of the catapult is made from two by four planks. This choice of material provides sturdiness and allows the base to be heavy enough, so that it would not fall over when launching. The planks are on the two inch sides, which provides more surface area to attach other parts, and are held together by screws. Two more two by four’s were screwed on vertically on opposite sides inside the base. These planks act as pillars, to which eye hooks are placed on the tops, that will hold the bungee cords in placed. Holes, with diameters that are relatively close to the diameter of the copper pipe, were drilled through the

As the parts are supported, there is an elastic rubber band that stretches from one standing stick to the other, which is where our spoon (the scooper/releaser) is held down by the base and pulled back to function like that of a catapult. A catapult operates using gravity that pulls downward, and an object that can lob through the air with enough force that can defy gravity, is thrown in an upward and forward direction. Then it’ll launch to form a special curve that is formed like an arch, which is called a parabola. It will then eventually land downward and forward. As a group, we’ve observed multiple parabolas that was made from our catapult and measured the distance and height of seven total attempts. From there, we chose the three best and and most consistent, which led to finding the three main points in our table and plotted on our graph--(0,5) which is our y-intercept since it was launched 5 inches off the ground, next it was averaged to (103.75, 63.3) which is the vertex showing the maximum point of our parabola reached by our catapult. It was found by the average of our three best points and the farthest distance was divided in half to find the x-value as the y-value

Trebuchet: Trebuchets are counterweight catapults. Balancing on its fulcrum, the trebuchet is loaded and counterweight are loaded. The “launcher”, for lack of a better word, is then pulled down so that the counterweight is at the top. Once released, the counterweight will pull the “launcher”up. It will in turn launch whatever it is loaded with.

last force is weight which is what keeps the bottle on the string.these are the 4 forces working to

Introduction If you were in a raiding army in the Middle Ages, a catapult would come in mighty handy for taking down castle walls. So by now, you will know my project is about simple catapult. My reason why making this simple catapult was to show how to make a simple machine without pulleys and lever and things like them also I wanted to make a simple machine that can move things to one place to another. You need information because you need to know what they are how the actual catapult work and how the miniature catapults are alike and how the parts are alike and different and what parts do what. Scientific concepts or principles the catapult uses are angles, attitude, power, distance, and weight. I have never researched this in the past but

Our Catapult is also a first class lever. As you can see in this illustration, the ball is the load, the fulcrum is where the pipe is connected to the center block of wood and the input force is the bungee cords. A first class lever has the fulcrum between the input and the output force. I said earlier the bungee cords have potential energy. When the pipe is released the force of the bungee cords pulls the bottom of the pipe towards the person holding the pipe in this case Maria). This is a fist class because when you apply a force to one side (bungee cords) the other force exerts that force but in the opposite direction (ball being shot).