Trebuchet Challenge Competition Reflection

Our trebuchet performed very well in the accuracy part of the challenge! Our best hurl of the tennis ball landed 0.620 m from the center of the hula hoop- we were thrilled with these results! As a result of our success, we were awarded 2nd place in the accuracy competition and received 9/10 points!

Our loaded trebuchet for the accuracy competition- ready to fire!

If I had the opportunity to modify our current trebuchet, I would make it better suited for the accuracy competition. Although our bungee cords worked well in the accuracy competition, I feel that adjusting the counterweight mass may have been a better and more precise way to control the distance the tennis ball flew. The bungee cords reduced the speed at which the arm fell, reducing the velocity with which the ball was released. I feel that if we had adjusted the weight, we would have been able to more accurately adjust the range (through using different masses of weights) that our tennis ball flew.

I feel that our overall design of the trebuchet was quite excellent. If we were to create a completely new trebuchet, I think we may have used a slightly larger counterweight, which would have hopefully caused the tennis ball to fly further, improving our distance competition results.

Toward the end of the distance competition, the sewing on our pouch became loose. I feel that if we had reinforced the sewing on the pouch that the trebuchet may have performed better. Also, we could have tweaked the angle of release slightly by adjusting our nail. We did not adjust the nail however, because we felt that we had a good angle of release and chose not to alter something that had worked consistently well for us.