The catapult is an invention made by the ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius the Elder. It was made in 400 BC, it was a weapon for war. It was used in many wars until around the 14th century. Because when the 14th century came around they had invented gun powder and so they could make guns and cannons that could fire way faster and harder. The catapult became very quickly obsolete. However, Dionysius did make the mangonel there were other versions of this catapult. The Romans made a catapult called the ballista. The ballista was different because it was made like a giant crossbow. It would fire giant arrows and stakes. There was also the trebuchet made in 300 BC by the Chinese. A trebuchet uses a counter weight and gravity to fire the weapon while the other two use elastic force.

Day 1 : We drafted how we wanted the catapult to look and how we will make it.

Day 2: We changed our draft up a bit and started gathering necessary materials for the project

Day 3: We started to actually make the catapult. We ran into a slight calculation error. We hadn’t adjusted for the impact of the launch arm for when it hits the crossbar resulting in the crossbar breaking.

Day 4: We screwed in some pieces that were loose (like the crossbar). The screws really helped with the integrity of the catapult. We also test launched the catapult and it made good distance.

Our catapult worked with elastic forces. (you can see the red circle). We made the catapult out of wood and had a cylinder that would swivel to shoot the arm. To shoot the catapult we pulled back the arm(blue) and the elastics (red) would shoot it back up and when that would happen a projectile would shoot out of the basket(blue). A problem with the catapult is that the efficiency is not 100% because of the sound that it lets out and because it recoils and moves.