Getting down to business

5/12/14
Met for the last time at Maria's house to finalize the project. Took less time than we expected.
https://twitter.com/CatapultProjec1

Victory at it's finest. (Josh refused to be in this picture so he just took it instead)

TRIAL #3

This was our 3rd and final trial. In this trial we replaced the wooden stick with a metal one that Maria's dad had in their garage. We also fixed the end hook to be precisely on the top of the arm rather than on the bottom of it. We figured that this was more successful. The last thing we did was try it out with 3 pavers instead of 4 and found to be a bit more successful. This was our victory trial.  

TRIAL #2

This was our second trial, this time we tried using a bucket with 4 pavers rather than a bucket full of water. Unfortunately, you can see & hear in this video that the stick holding the arm of our catapult snapped because the 4 pavers were too heavy. Not a successful trial.

5/12/14
Met in the computer one last time to wrap up last minute details to add to our blog, catapult, & to record our final trial before we go & launch.

4/30/14
Meeting up a day after our power tools ran out of battery. This time we met up at Maria's house with a little bit more luck. We got the whole catapult built & put it together. At first we didn't know how to attach the support of the catapult but then Maria's dad got home and suggested we cut the wood with the saw to then attach it. We also ran a couple trials, which we weren't so successful with.

We all got a chance to cut some wood with the powerful saw, it was kind of scary when Maria almost cut her finger because she was holding the wood down from the wrong side. ALMOST had to make a stop at the new Oviedo ER. 

This is part of our catapult without the trigger mechanism. Not the finished product. 

Josh is frustrated.

TRIAL #1

     Frustration at it's finest. We didn't know what else to do to make the water football project further. We originally started using water in the bucket to see if that would help but there was only so much water we could pour into the bucket and every time we went to launch, it was just a messy pool party.  We then decided to start using a different bucket because the blue bucket in the picture was a bit wide for the width we had built the catapult with. And during every launch the bucket would not fully let the weight down because the width of the catapult was too small for the bucket to easily slide through. We also decided to start using left over pavers that were around Maria's house because we thought that adding & taking away weight would be easier.