The Amazing Trebuchet

Today I am going to talk about an event called Storm the Castle.

But before I explain the purpose of this event I am going to answer the age old question of the difference between a catapult and a trebuchet. (The images are in the same order that I mentioned them in)

The main difference between the two is that a catapult uses an arm to launch the desired object with a counterweight and the trebuchet uses an arm to sling the desired object. In most scenarios of using both devices it does not matter which device you chose to build, it just depends on how you want your object to be thrown.

Now since I have answered that question lets get on with the event. The main focus of this event is to sling an object of the judges choice into a box at a certain distance away. The object that the judges would chose any one of three objects. These objects could be either a tennis ball, a hacky sack, or a lacrosse ball, depending on which year of competition you are looking at.

The box could have been placed between 8 and 12 meters away. The way that you would control where the ball would land is by moving a firing pin on the back of the trebuchet to a specific angle that you would figure out through practicing the event.

This event was one of my favorites because of how quickly I was able to build the trebuchet and how much skill it took to be cable to preform in a competition because you did not know what distance it would be until the day of the competition.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I hope this could help get someone interested in backyard projects that are not that hard to complete.