Kevin+and+Shawn's+Trebuchet

This is about Kevin and Shawn's awesome trebuchet

In our research we found a Trebuchet simulator program. The program allows us to test the performance of differently built Trebuchet's by altering variables such as arm length and mass, etc, etc. We both downloaded the program on our home computers and we both could alter the trebuchet, but neither of us has successfully fire the simulated trebuchets.



Dec 2nd - we did our initial work on the trebuchet today. We got it to a working product but it isn't performing terribly well so we'll continue to improve on our design. the main problem we have is the release of the marble. we were using a marble to test and our trebuchet is made of a product called buildariffic. We tried serveral methods but the design we kept with is the picture directly above and to the left of this text. Me and shawn made this edit together

The biggest problem I see with our trebuchet is that the arming isn't accelerating quick enough to launch a projectile any significant distance. The way I see it, we need to find a way to get a lot more acceleration in a lot less time.
 * = trial# ||= Weight ||= Arm-length ||= distance ||= P=d/ml ||
 * = 1 ||= .4 ||= .46 ||= .4 ||= 2.17 ||
 * = 2 ||= .4 ||= .46 ||= .59 ||= 3.27 ||
 * = 3 ||= .4 ||= .46 ||= .73 ||= 4.06 ||
 * = 4 ||= .4 ||= .46 ||= .6 ||= 3.33 ||
 * = 5 ||= .4 ||= .46 ||= .7 ||= 3.88 ||
 * = 6 ||= .4 ||= .46 ||= .63 ||= 3.5 ||
 * = 7 ||= .4 ||= .46 ||= .74 ||= 4.11 ||
 * = 8 ||= .4 ||= .46 ||= .79 ||= 4.39 ||

we changed the bucket partway through which gave us increased distance

the attempts with the pulley system isn't included since it never actually fired properly If you want to make a similar trebuchet follow these instructions. MATERIALS. box of buildarrific - the material we made our trebuchet out of a marble a christmas ball two cans of pop (for drinking not building) a computer and finally love(you can't go wrong with love) Procedure 1) debate how you are going to build the trebuchet consider lego, wood or lego wood hybrid 2) have one of your group members dad bring some old plastic build kit out of the basement 3) build the base for the trebuchet out of some yellow pparts screwed to some orangee parts 4) put some longer yellow parts up and connect them to green triangles 5) put some yellow pieces on a red piece and put it through the green triangles this is the arm and pivot point 6) attach a bunch of block parts to the short end and put some blue buckets on the bottom so it doesn't fall 7) test it out 8) take a drink break 9)put a bucket on one end 10) put a marble in the bucket and fire 11) try and fail to make a pulley system 12)swap the bucket for some orange things and put a red thing through the base to stop it from throwing down 13) profit

I thought our trebuchet performed really well for being made of plastic toys from the 80's. A performance score of 4.11 doesn't seem to bad to me. Turns out adding a heavier weight did increase the speed of launch, but the performance was only marginally better (about 10cm) and the performance score would have dropped as a trade off. I would have liked to play around with more designs to replace the bucket and said orange things. Also I think the pulley idea was really good in theory.....we just failed miserably. All in all I think we did an excellent job in designing a lightweight, small trebuchet that fired pretty decently (actually about 10cm better than we thought it was going to do) in the end.