Trebuchets
Gorilla Salad
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Registered User regular
Shamelessly stolen from Wiki.
Picture from Lego education
So, let's discuss Trebuchets. Have you ever built one? Full size or small scale? What would you launch with it?
Wikipedia wrote:A trebuchet is a medieval siege engine, a weapon employed either to smash masonry walls or to throw projectiles over them. It is sometimes called a "counterweight trebuchet" in order to distinguish it from an earlier weapon that has come to be called the "traction trebuchet." Sometimes the word trebuchet is used to refer ambiguously to either weapon, but originally it referred to the counterweighted weapon. All trebuchets were made from wood.
The counterweight trebuchet appeared in both Christian and Muslim lands around the Mediterranean in the twelfth century. It could fling three hundred pound (140 kg) projectiles at high speeds into enemy fortifications. On occasion, disease-infected corpses were flung into cities in an attempt to infect the people under siege--a medieval variant of biological warfare. Trebuchets were invented in China in about the 4th century BC, came to Europe in the 6th century AD, and did not become obsolete until the 16th century, well after the introduction of gunpowder. Trebuchets were far more accurate than other medieval catapults.
Picture from Lego education
So, let's discuss Trebuchets. Have you ever built one? Full size or small scale? What would you launch with it?
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2. Full-size.
3. Cows.
Cows are good for the splatter effect, but they can't beat cars.
jesus
old techology is still technology.
Besides, I really like trebuchets.
Fo reals.
Good point.
Because trebuchets are medieval technology.
I never quite got the hang of how exactly trecbuchets work.
http://www.trebuchet.com/10400
only $69!
http://www.trebuchet.com/11001
this one is only $29
You can find many more by searching "Trebuchet Plans" on google.
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I had planned on building one of these a few years ago, but life sort of interrupted and I never picked it back up again.
I wasn't expecting the math behind it so soon. i'd figured it would show up on page 3 or 4. but thats an interesting read.
I'm thinking about it, But since I work in a bank, they may lynch me for bringing a camera in. We have to keep our cellphones off at work as it is...
It's pretty thorough - it looks like he went through a whole parametric optimization thing on three different trebuchet designs. He cut a few corners, but I don't think it will have affected the results much; I got pretty close to his numbers for the traditional fixed-axle trebuchet, way back when.
Old fashioned weapons and architecture is actually very complex in some cases.
spent 6 weeks constructing one in physics class.
ended up launching a watermelon about 300m over the roof of the school (which is 4 storey), over the carkpark and crashing into the primary school roof across the road, landing through a glass roof and spraying watermelon all over a classroom (no kids were in it, this was well after end of school) the terbuchet was enormous. like, ludicrously enormous. i have pics somewhere, of both the device, the launching and the carnage.
we got in a LOAD of shit for that.
also, an A+
"I'm sorry sir, I'm so so sorry!"
"WHAT ABOUT? THAT WAS FUCKING AWESOME! A+"
Pictures, now.
d/dt [δL/δ(dq/dt)] - δL/δq = Q, beeotch
Oh man, I almost would let them launch me from a trebuchet.
Almost.
With no knowledge of how a trebuchet worked we managed to create a fairly large one that was able to hurl a cinder block about 50 meters.
sadly we were forced to disassemble it before we could unleash it any where else
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