Designing a Catapult to Reach a Minimum of 10 Meters

Alice, Maeve, Leah, and Greer

Washington Latin Public Charter School
5200 2nd St NW, Washington, DC 20011
Background: Data:
For our project, we reached multiple domains. One of them
was developing and using models- we made a blueprint of what
we would make for our catapult. We also used problem solving,
when we realized our catapult would not launch far enough, and Figure 6: Score Figure 7: Final Catapult
found we needed to change our catapult’s arm and launching
mechanism. A WikiHow article inspired our design, by showing us
the basics of a good, working catapult.
WikiHow Cited:
How to Build a Strong Catapult. (2021, November 29). wikiHow.
Our Design Process
Retrieved December 3, 2021, from
https://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Strong-Catapult

Research objective:
To create a catapult that can consistently launch a Figure 3: Materials
Figure 5: Working
Figure 4: Base Catapult!
tennis ball over 10 meters.

Figure 2: How it Materials:

Works - 1 broomstick: $0
- Various 2 by 4 planks: $0 Our final product! This is our working
- 20 ft rope: $0 catapult from Figure 5, except we
- Screws: $0 made a couple changes to make it
- 15” by 12” padding: $0 more effective, and then painted it.
- Pastic cup: $0
- Pink paint: $0 This is a diagram in which the red
dots mark where the tennis ball
landed.

Conclusion:
● Although our catapult could fire over 10 meters, when
Our Original Design Although this form wasn’t we tested it, it only did that 2 out of the 3 times.
(FIgures 1 and 2) We connected multiple fully our end result, this Therefore, it couldn’t consistently fire over 10 meters,
This shows a collection and we didn’t reach our objective.
of our materials, as pieces of wood to make was the form that realized
the frame for the our design, and the first ● It, however, was fairly accurate- it just fired straight
listed to the left.
These are the diagrams of catapult form that was able to forward it the direction it faced.
how our catapult would launch objects. ● At first, we did exactly what our design said. However, it
work- how we would create didn’t work very well- it only went 1-2 meters.
torsion, along with the ● We ended up changing the arm to make it more
triggering mechanism. lightweight. We also moved the rope, which created the
torsion, back and higher. Both of these changes allowed
for more power, leading to the catapult going farther.
Figure 1: Overall Catapult Design

Acknowledgements/References:
How to Build a Strong Catapult. (2021, November 29). wikiHow.
Retrieved December 3, 2021, from
https://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Strong-Catapult

We want to thank Leah’s parents, Jana and Shawn Bleimehl, for

supplying us with many of the materials needed. Shawn
This is the side and top views of our catapult Bleimehl also helped us cut some of the wood we needed.
design.