Trebuchet Competition
For this project I was on a team of four people, and our job was to build a trebuchet that could throw eggs accurately at targets placed at varying distances. For the criteria of this project we had to make a five to ten minute presentation about how our trebuchet worked and how it was going to accomplish the task. Our design was a floating arm trebuchet, which means that the weight would drop and the arm would actually ride along the track of the trebuchet in order to create a lot of momentum and throw the egg efficiently. Assembling the trebuchet was limited by certain constraints. These are the constraints we had to follow for the competition: the trebuchet must be able to fit in a 4'x6'x3' box disassembled, the machine can only use the energy created by the falling weight, it must be adjustable, the parts must only be things you would find in a lumber yard, and the machine must be able to be triggered by a mechanism at least ten feet away.
On the day of the competition we presented our trebuchet and how we built it, to a group of engineers that were judging our group. After telling the engineers how the machine worked, we took it outside and started firing. Though the egg did not hit the target every time, it was a successful day because the machine worked better than in days previous. Trying to adjust the distance the machine threw by changing the weight that dropped was difficult because we could not get extremely consistent results with one weight. The above pictures show the machine as it is throwing the egg at a target.