Yesterday, in conjunction with The Castle, we did a class workshop on catapults with the 7th grade science students at Greencastle Middle School. They were challenging sessions with both physics and mathematics involved, but the kids in the 7th grade science classes on Friday worked through the calculations to solve whether a 150 pound wild boar could be hurled across a 100 yard moat using a catapult. Their current curriculum was in the Newton’s laws of motion section, which they had to use to help answer the question.
With only a 43 minute class period to work with, we had to reduce the scenario to a fairly short calculation. The groups were given the wild boar launch velocity (100 ft/sec at a 45 degree angle) and had to calculate the flight time so the total distance traveled could be determined. For those that finished the problem quickly they could try to figure how the distance would change if a cow was instead launched, but that was a bonus item that most didn’t get to. We finished up by test launching a few stuffed animals in the classroom to see a simple catapult in action.
Special thanks to Mr. Wickerman for letting us into his classroom, to Kara Jedele from The Castle for arranging the workshop, and both Kara and Emily Knuth for helping in the classroom.