Last week we learned about levers. Before last week I knew that I used levers in shovels, scissors, and other devices, but I had no idea that there were different classes of levers or that there is so much science behind them! What was even more interesting and fun than the lesson though, was the project. We got to build real, working (mini) catapults!
After watching one of the video lessons Mr. Calvert sent to us, I had a basic idea of how to use rubber bands and popsicle sticks to create my catapult. Attaching popsicle sticks with only rubber bands was difficult because achieving the desired angle took upwards of 3 or 4 minutes. It took about 30 minutes to construct my wooden frame. I added on the swinging arm and grabbed one of my gummi bears, ready to test my catapult. I quickly realized that I had forgotten a key part of my catapult; a container to fix onto the top of the swinging arm! Without it, my gummi bears would have slid right off.
I couldn’t find a bottle cap or anything else that was small enough, but that wasn’t a big problem. I found a small piece of cardboard and cut out a small circle and a skinny strip. Using hot glue I secured the ends of the strip together, creating a circle. After securing that loop onto the top of the circle I had something that looked like a cardboard bottle cap. Thankfully I had a drop more of glue in my hot glue gun (phew!), so I glued on the “bottle cap” to my catapult.
After a short break to eat some of my ammunition (red Haribo gummi bears are delicious, but the orange ones are disgusting!), I decided to test out my catapult from about five feet away from my target. It flew the distance easily, but not once in my nearly thirty tries did it land on my sheet of paper.
All in all, I found this project extremely interesting informative, and fun, causing it to be my favourite one so far.