Catapult Essay

The creation of the catapult was around the 3rd to 4th Century BC (A Brief). There were three main types of Catapults: The Ballista, Mangonel, and Trebuchet. They were constructed massively up to sixty feet and larger, in addition, they were made out of wood, rope, and other materials (History of Catapults). Catapults were used as a weapon to launch stones, missiles, and other objects during warfare (History of Catapults). They were used for centuries up until the invention of gunpowder and other forms of weapons (A Brief). The design idea that we selected through a video was a catapult made with popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and a spoon, which resembled a Mangonel (How to Make). Our reasonings for choosing this design was that it was simple to build, it looked efficient enough to go the bare minimum of 2 meters, and the materials were easy to work with.
The process of constructing the catapult was not challenging because it consisted of simply hot gluing popsicle sticks together to create the structure. However, the most difficult part about building the catapult was the attachment of the spoon with rubber bands, which was then attached to
A successful part of it was that the structure was built strong enough to stay intact after launching play dough multiple times in a row. A failure aspect of it was that it does not launch the play dough as far as we would want it to, it launches the play dough consistently a little over the minimum requirement of 2 meters. After seeing our catapult perform, we would not change our design for multiple reasons. Firstly, the the structure had no flaws with launching the play dough; it was consistent throughout every launch. Secondly, it launched the play dough to the requirement with ease. Finally, the play dough successfully made it into the first tub more than once which accumulated points for us. Therefore, our catapult met our expectations on how well it