Hannah Bales
Physics- 2nd
Mrs. Scott
9 October 2014

Catapult Project
Catapults are siege engines that use an arm to hurl a projectile a great distance. The word "catapult" referred to a dart-thrower, while "ballista" referred to a stone-thrower, but over the years, the two terms switched meanings. Catapults were assembled at the site of a siege, and an army carried few or no pieces of it with them because the wood that was needed was usually easily available on site. The Greeks invented the earliest form of a catapult, but adapted to have a sling that would allow all sorts of objects to be hurled. The best of all medieval siege weapons is a trebuchet, which used gravity or traction, rather than tension or torsion, to propel the throwing arm in order to get projectile motion.
Now catapults are used in target practice to shoot clay pigeons in the air, to launch food at siblings, and the most common use to launch planes into the air. An aircraft carrier doesn't have the runway space to allow for a plane to accelerate taking off as it would on the ground so a catapult is used to propel the aircraft into the air in a very short distance. The military uses them to throw grenades into the enemies trenches.
In building my catapult I used wood, card board from soda boxes, thumb tacks, nails, screws, hot glue, and pom poms. I had to measure every piece of wood and cut it with the saw. I put it together and came up with the brilliant idea of putting a cradle, the cardboard,