TrebUchet

I made the U in trebuchet a capital because every time David says it he says it wrong so this thing shows how I feel ->:banghead)

But on a physics note, after we fired our trebuchet I was wondering how fast the softball went and how we could have improved the firing. So our maximum distance was 38 yards which I'm and just going to say is 38 meters, and to go this distance if was in the air for 2.55 seconds. With this we can find that the initial velocity of the ball in the x-direction would be about 15m/s! In an ideal situation the ball would have launched at a 45 degree angle, so the horizontal and vertical velocities would have been the same, making the total initial velocity 21m/s, which is quite far. However, if we were to do this again one thing I would want to try would be to make the lever arm longer because the equation for touqe is force times distance, so the longer the distance from the pivot point, the more tourqe there would be which would hopefully fire our softball farther. Just saying.