Post-Competition Reflection

Our Trebuchet did excellent in the accuracy portion of the competition, we scored first in the event! All the other teams did very well also, it was a close event and we didn't win by much. During the practice runs we were getting very good results and we felt extremely confident going into the challenge. Our first of three shots took the lead in the first round, but once the second round came along other teams were starting to pull ahead. In the third round we miraculously made a shot that was only 50cm away from the hoop which led us to victory. If there was any changes I could make to the trebuchet to optimize it's performance i would probably shorten the throwing arm and adjust the weight slightly. These minor changes could have made all the difference in the world causing us to succeed even further, but on the other side of the spectrum this could have proved fatal and cost us the win. All in all I was pleased with the trebuchet we created. If I were to build a completely new trebuchet I would most likely make it taller rather than shorter, and narrower rather than wider. Theses alterations would've proved for optimum distance giving us the win in that category. I also would make the angle of release adjustments easier to be done and read. This should've still allowed us to have a fighting chance in the accuracy competition. To make our current trebuchet better we would need to strengthen the frame and make it taller/narrower. I believe that these alterations would've proved valuable in the performance of our trebuchet. All in all I a extremely pleased with the performance of my trebuchet and team members!

Competition Day - Planning Ahead

Essentially we were fairly happy with our performance, for the accuracy competition we as a team believe it'll be a simple matter of changing the mass of our counter-weight. Somewhere around 25 pounds should do the trick for us to win the accuracy competition !

Competition Day - Theoritical Range

The theoretical range of our trebuchet was a whopping 813 m! Yet, our ball only flew an average of 30.41 meters. Here's five reasons why it didn't get in the ballpark of 813:
1. Air Resistance: within the TRC (theoretical range calculation), the aspect of air resistance is completely ignored.
2. Faulty Engineering: Again the TRC would not account for any faults in the building process.
3. Angle of release: I can guarantee that our angle of release wasn't even close to 45 degrees, this would affect distance.
4. The design of the trebuchet should have been narrower and taller, rather than shorter and wider.
5. 813 meters? seems a little impossible for a trebuchet of this size anyways!

Test Day - Trebuchet

When we did the tests on our Trebuchets, Jonathan, Nick and myself were slightly disappointed in the performance of our device. It was unable to withstand repeated use due to absence of suitable materials and "shoddy" build structure. Unlike some of the other groups, our Trebuchet was still able to fire forward with an average range of about 20 meters, unfortunately this was not far enough so we went back to the drawing board. The bucket of bolts we were using as our counter weight was an utter failure. This resulted in us completely changing our counter-weight to a 120 pound set of barbells. We also completely reinforced our sidewalls. Hopefully this will prove better.

Medical Physics

For our physics project, Carmen, Jonathan and myself have chosen the topic of MRI's (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). I will be looking at the description and background information of the MRI and why we selected it as our topic. Jonathan will be doing the historical development of the machines and a description on how the technology works. Carmen will be finding potential future applications of MRI's and some interesting facts about them.

Egg Drop day

Yesterday was Egg Drop Day! Unfortunately my egg container was the only one that failed to protect the egg.





1. Container Mass: 104.7g


Dimensions: 14cm X 9cm X 5.5cm


Time of Fall: 0.91 Seconds


Distance of Fall:


Condition of Egg: Broken... :(


Earned Egg Points: a solid 0 points.


2. (currently no picture)


3. The restriction that affected me the most was probably in the inability to use a parachute. If we were allowed to use one it would've made all the difference in the world. It would have slowed the speed that the container was falling and greatly reduced the force of the impact, possibly, saving the egg.


4. The most effective part of its design was the styrofoam on the bottom half. It was shaped to the egg and protected it extremely well on all angles except for the top. The least effective part of the containers design was the cotton balls and pillow stuffing on the top half. The combination of stuff didn't provide enough cushion for the egg and when it fell it fell on this causing it to break.



5. To fit two eggs in the container it would have had to been made bigger obvisouly. Also the styrofoam would have to be fitted to contain a second egg.

Egg Test

Today was the test day for our egg drop challenge. We used a small box filled with cotton balls. I practiced it at home and it was working at small heights but then it broke at about a meter high. To alter the design, my team member Adelyn and I added a Styrofoam base and more padding on top. This design hasn't failed yet and consistently protects the egg. I feel confident about the challenge !

Day 2

Today in class we all added clustrmaps to our blog. The maps are used to show us where in the world people are viewing our blogs. This taught us how to take HTML code and use it to our advantage and they are also intended to open our eyes to how easily accessible our information is. Also, we changed settings to add safety features to our blogs.

40s Physics

Today we added gadgets and experimented with more backgrounds to our page. We also started to follow one another on blogger. Now we are summarizing what we did today, and everyone loved my URL because it's awesome.