For this project, I worked with Liana and Natalie to create our best designs of modern catapults. To begin, we thought about what kinds of designs would work, and what kinds of designs were out of our reach. We decided that a suspension catapult would be the best way to go so we began by making a small prototype of a rough replica of how we would want our finished product to look like. The prototype that we made is similar to a Trebuchet catapult and works exactly like one. We put a counterweight on one end of the arm and half of a ping pong ball as the basket. We used an egg carton to be the base and a mixture of cardboard and foam core for the two beams that held up the arm of the catapult. We placed a toothpick through the cardboard to balance it and allow it to rotate. Then we had two balls of hot glue on each side of the arm on the tooth pick to prevent the arm from moving side to side. When we realized that the egg carton was not strong enough to hold the rest of the catapult, we placed the exact same weight that were used on the arm to the underside of the carton. This made it possible for the arm of the catapult to swing back and forth without it moving the base of the prototype. Above are multiple pictures of the prototype that we created.
|