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.