Do it Better Project
In this project, each group picked one project they did previously and tried to make it better. Every project had its flaws so this was the chance to recreate something. My group decided to make a catapult. We had one day where we made catapults for one period and shot them. Mine was inconsistent and broke every time it was shot. Our goal for this project was not necessarily to go further, it was just to make it look better, make it more durable, self-powered, and more user friendly. The design we ended up using was based off an ancient roman catapult. A roman catapult uses a crossbow like bending piece attached by string to the throwing arm. However, we had a twist to the design. Instead of using wood for our bending piece, we used PVC pipe. We decided on PVC because it had a lot of flex which was needed.
Concepts:
Potential Energy: potential energy is the energy that an object has due to its position in a force field or that a system has due to the configuration of its parts.
Spring Constant: the force needed to extend or compress a spring by some distance is proportional to that distance.
Acceleration: Acceleration is the rate of change in an object's motion. It is calculated with the formula ΔV/ΔT.
Mechanical Advantage: Mechanical advantage is how much easier the machine makes work. This is calculated by dividing the input distance over the output distance.
Our Catapult vs. Roman Catapult:
In this project, each group picked one project they did previously and tried to make it better. Every project had its flaws so this was the chance to recreate something. My group decided to make a catapult. We had one day where we made catapults for one period and shot them. Mine was inconsistent and broke every time it was shot. Our goal for this project was not necessarily to go further, it was just to make it look better, make it more durable, self-powered, and more user friendly. The design we ended up using was based off an ancient roman catapult. A roman catapult uses a crossbow like bending piece attached by string to the throwing arm. However, we had a twist to the design. Instead of using wood for our bending piece, we used PVC pipe. We decided on PVC because it had a lot of flex which was needed.
Concepts:
Potential Energy: potential energy is the energy that an object has due to its position in a force field or that a system has due to the configuration of its parts.
Spring Constant: the force needed to extend or compress a spring by some distance is proportional to that distance.
Acceleration: Acceleration is the rate of change in an object's motion. It is calculated with the formula ΔV/ΔT.
Mechanical Advantage: Mechanical advantage is how much easier the machine makes work. This is calculated by dividing the input distance over the output distance.
Our Catapult vs. Roman Catapult:
Reflection:
This project was my favorite. We ran into many problems but overcame them. We kept on cranking through our design and making tweaks. There is only one thing that could have gone better as far as group work.That was to have everyone work on equal parts of the project. Other than this, nothing was conflicting besides the actual catapult.
The things we did that were great were communicating and building our design. When we were brainstorming ideas, we each gave an idea and decided its pros and cons. We did this so that we would all be on the same page. When building our design, we kept overcoming problems. It was fun to talk to each other and figure out the best way to fix the problem. Overall, I really enjoyed working with my group on this project.