Tennis the fun way II!!!
Posted on | May 12, 2010 | No Comments
After our school project, my nephew and I couldn’t wait to start on the next way to launch a tennis ball. So he suggested we try the catapult approach. LOL, So here I go again thinking I know it all and failing again. Our first attemp came out looking like a bucket in the middle of a WW2 razor wire barrier. The structure was sound but I had problems with figuring out how to power it. Rubber bands don’t work quite as well as I thought they would. My nephew “the brains of the operation” suggested we try what we did last time. So, I just gave it a shot and typed in diycatapults.com. BOOM, problem solved. They have a sweet set of catapult plans that show you just how to power a catapult. We took the same process and multiplied it about 10 times. The result worked perfectly. We were able to launch 15 tennis balls a distance to far for my 100 foot tape measure to record. If I had to guess I would say about 300 feet maybe. I am probably exaggerating maybe. Anyway, it was AWESOME and apparently this is the way the romans powered their catapults as early as the first century BC. So my nephew got a history lesson as well as mechanical and engineering experience. We are going to build more types of catapults and maybe a trebuche hopefully. I sure hope diy is there to help us out on this one if we need it. You never know though I may figure it out on my own “not likely”.
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