Trebu-what?

Hey everyone,

I am in between group meetings right now for school. I just thought I would take the time to post something fun I did over the weekend and in between studying my brains out desperately trying to graduate (I won't believe it until I see it).

Anyway, my friends and I have formed an "adventure team" that plans fun things to do and then ACTUALLY does them. It's crazy I know. So what is it that we did you ask? Well, it all boils down to running-a-muck, and right now running-a-muck that means we built a trebuchet. (I wonder if anyone like my Dad is rolling their eyes right now.)

There was no real reason behind building it, it just sounded like fun, so we did. We tried to model it after one of the famous trebuchet's of history called the Warwolf. You can see how accurate we were in the pictures, it's an amazing resemblance if you ask me. We used left over wood from a house my friend built for his family and a utility bucket to hold the counter weights (dirt and rocks) We were eventually able to throw a potato well over 100 feet (we didn't have anything to measure with but we feel it's close) using the mighty power of GRAVITY! (Some of us could throw the potato ourselves that far, but hey we had fun.)

We decided to name the trebuchet Death, partly because one of my friends just wanted to write it all over it because of how unsure we were of our handy work, the other part is because we did almost hit ourselves. Our release pin was too vertical, which means the trebuchet would release too early, we actually threw a few potatoes backwards. So here are the pictures, one is of myself and my friends, the other is of the trebuchet in action (you can see a potato in the top right corner). I hope you enjoy them as much as I did doing it.

Ian