On to things written outside of church. Saturday was spent, and I mean all of Saturday, constructing a trebuchet for AP Physics. Chris Nance, Amy Blevins, and Thomas... whose last name I don't know, but anyway, they were my trebuchet group, and I'm very glad I was working with them. We'd been planning for a while, and finally met at Amy's house six days before the due date (this Friday) to begin construction. We were all there by around noon and began finalizing plans and gathering materials, began construction, made a trip to Home Depot for wood and all the other stuff we needed, had lunch, continued construction, had dinner, and continued construction. Thomas left a bit before dinner, and Chris left close to nine. I left at about ten, and by then we'd very nearly finished the whole thing. The base and frame are done, the arm is complete (counterweight and axle) and mounted on the frame, and all our nervously calculated dimensional clearances turned out to be good enough. All that remains is to put wheels on the base and hammer some sort of hook into the end of the throwing arm. The frame is four feet tall, four feet long, and eighteen inches wide; our arm is 47 inches long. Our counterweight is a large, solid cinderblock suspended by chains from a five-eighths-inch bolt at the end of the arm. Our axle has PVC bearings.
For one day, it was a tremendous amount of progress, and I for one am feeling very proud of the product. We still have yet to see if it'll throw worth crap, though.
posted on Monday, September 08, 2003
|
|
