Ancient people teach us a thing or two about energy when they laid siege to an enemy town. Although we won’t do this today, we will explore some of the important physics concepts about energy that they have to teach us by making a simple catapult. We’re utilizing the “springy-ness” in the popsicle stick, spoon, and the torsion spring to fling the ball around the room. By moving the fulcrum as far from the ball launch pad as possible (on the catapult), you get a greater distance to press down and release the projectile.
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Materials
- tongue-depressor size popsicle stick
- clothespin
- plastic spoon
- scrap of cardboard of wood
- ping pong ball or wadded-up ball of aluminum foil (or something lightweight to toss, like a marshmallow)
- hot glue gun with glue sticks
Observations:
- What part of the catapult stores the most potential energy? Why is this?
- Where is the kinetic energy transferred to in this catapult?
- How would you make a catapult’s projectile travel farther?
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how does the pencil make a trigger?
I’m sorry you’re having trouble! We’re about to do a major upgrade to our videos (in a week or two) to make them more instantly download, but in the meantime I’ll have my team take a look for you!
I’m having trouble loading this video as well (7/24/14), along with some others (diamond kite). I’ve tried firefox, internet explorer and safari for the diamond kite video (which loads, but takes an hour or two). I am in touch with someone at your help desk. Were the updates you mentioned receent, Aurora? Thanks!
Oh, good! I know our videos are now having issues since they did a bunch of updates to web browsers, so we’re working on a solution for this.
But, Firefox worked! 🙂
For some reason, my browser and my friend’s browser could not load the video. We have tried Safari and Chrome; will other browsers work? 🙁