Trebuchet

For Christmas, I received a table top trebuchet. A trebuchet is similiar to catapult but uses a counterweight instead of tension. During the summer, Fletcher was over at my house with his son, Will. While we talked, Will became excited by my little trebuchet. He busily launched nuts and rocks down the driveway into the street. Being an excited boy, he wanted to build a bigger one! Bingo! Now I had a reason to build a bigger trebuchet! Over the course of the summer, with the help of Will and his cousin, the trebuchet slowly took form in my garage. As the weather began to cool and pumpkins began to show up in the stores, we had a sudden rush to finish our project. Last Saturday, the trebuchet emerged from the garage and was placed on the sidewalk for its first launch! We carefully loaded it with weight and placed a football in the sling. We watched as the weight dropped, the sling moved, and the football sailed ten feet in the wrong direction! AHH! After some fine tuning, our fifth attempted sailed 90 feet in the correct direction! A Success! The video below shows the launch and the outcome. Unfortunately, the video was focused on the trebuchet (so we could watch and see what was going wrong!) so I'll post an updated video in a few days with a wider angle!