Remember that time our catapult for AP Physics C worked really well... yeah, me neither.

So, the original design was beautiful, modelled to be a trebuchet. The idea is that once a counter weight is dropped at one end of the trebuchet, it causes the launching arm to move in circular motion and launch the projectile out of a sling, of which one end is released by the circular motion of the arm.

While we did an excellent job building a frame for the trebuchet (mostly Justin, since I am absolutely not skilled with power tools and saws), our major issues surrounded the construction of the sling: it's shape, the angle of release for the free end of the sling, etc.

We started with using a draw string backpack for the sling, but it held the softball too tightly, not allowing for it to be released at all. Then we took the netting of a lacrosse stick head and used that, and while it held the ball nicely, our fatal flaw came with the angle of release. The softball was often released too early, making it launch backwards (an issue which caused the need for a 'fore!' during an launches). What we really needed to do was spend more time testing launches to tweak the sling and find the prime angle that would launch it the furthest. The angle of the sling pin is one of the major factors which determines it's time of release. The more angled the sling pin is, the longer the sling stays attached to the trebuchet, and the longer before the softball is released. We should have messed with the sling pin more to find the best time for release.

To be honest, if I had another chance, I would say let's just do a regular catapult. A trebuchet is great idea on paper...but since we didn't have the time and means necessary to do a quality job putting it together... a regular catapult would have sufficed.

At least we had something to launch that day! And we did get some negative displacement

Until next time, Fizzix Community, until next time.