Trebuchet Update

Here is the finished product. Well almost. I finished it up last night. But I don't know that I am all that happy with the results. I have to do a little more fine tuning. I would also like to see what a heavier counterweight will do for the performance. As I said, I built this trebuchet to throw tennis balls or eggs. According to the research I have done, the ideal weight ratio of counterweight to ammunition for a trebuchet is 133:1. An egg and tennis ball have approximately the same mass, 60 grams which converts to 0.132 pounds, times 133 is 17.56 pounds. Right now I only have 10 pounds on the counterweight. We will see what another 10 pounds does tomorrow. This is my unloaded trebuchet.Here is is fully loaded. I am actually pretty happy with the release mechanism that I came up with. It is simple and works pretty well. The other fine tuning I have to do is with the harness for the ammunition. Right now the release point is at a more acute angle than I would like. Ideally you would like the projectile to leave the trebuchet at an angle somewhere between 40 and 45 degrees for maximum distance. I only made one launch last night outside in the street. But the tennis ball did go about 100 feet. It was too cold and dark last night to sit in the street and make adjustments.

But because my readers do love a good video. I did shoot a video of it going off in my house. I also found in my research that adding wheels improves performance. Why do you ask? Well as the counterweight falls, it wants to fall in a straight line down towards the earth. Without wheels this would not happen. But with the wheels as you can see in the video the trebuchet moves backwards slightly as the counterweight drops. This produces more torque i.e, the trebuchet's arm rotates at a fast rate allowing the projectile to leave the arm at a faster rate of speed. I know that is some pretty exciting stuff. But it does help show that I sort of paid attention in college.