#physics project

"Just a few calculations" I say as I remove the cover of my calculator

who took Physics when they were in High School?

who enjoyed it? if I'm completely honest, the only reason I opted for Physics over Marine Biology in my 12th Grade year, was all of my friends were required to take Physics (because the Physics teacher required all of his Calculus students to take Physics as well, but I digress)

now, for years my High School had given it’s 12th grade physics class a practical application project, specifically, build a Trebuchet, do the 2-dimensional motion calculations required to determine a list of variables, including: maximum height of the projectile, angle of release, horizontal and vertical velocity of the projectile, distance from launch to landing, etc. and all we could use to determine those, was the physical dimensions of the trebuchet (length of arm, counterweight mass, drop of counterweight, etc)

then attempt to hit the Physics professor with a one pound water balloon for extra credit.

another way to get extra credit, was to build a very particular type of Trebuchet, called a “Floating Arm Trebuchet” where the pivot point for the boom-arm isn’t fixed, but instead ‘floats’ along a guide rail as the counterweight is dropped straight down.

as our team’s resident computer junkie, I pulled up a 3D model of a Floating Arm Trebuchet on Trimble’s 3D warehouse for Google Sketchup. attached is a screenshot of the model we used (over 5 years ago!).

in the image, you can see a pair of wheels in the middle of the Boom, that’s the pivot. As the counterweight falls, the wheels hit the horizontal bars, and roll along to the far end of the frame, whipping the sling-end of the boom over and forward.

our group consisted of three people: Myself, a childhood friend, and another friend who I often debated Sci-Fi with.

(all faces have been blurred for the privacy of those involved, except for my own, see that stupid looking motherfucker on the far right? yeah, that’s me xP )

one of my friends, the guy standing right next to the trebuchet, his dad is a prosthetist, he makes fake limbs for combat veterans, amputees, or people born with missing limbs. as such, he has.a shop that’s absolutely FULL of neat machinery and materials. he said we could use all of that, with supervision, as long as we paid for the raw materials ourselves. $400 later, we had the lumber, the screws, and the glue. using the model I'd gotten, we set to work cutting pieces to length, gluing and then screwing them together. of course, we made some ‘improvements’ to the original design.

we affixed teflon tape to all of the moving parts, including the guide wheels on the boom, and the vertical and horizontal guide rails on the frame. we wrapped the counterweight end of the boom in a fiberglass cast, to act as an anchor for the counterweight mount, and ran a strip of carbon fiber tape down both edges of the boom for added strength. the mount for the counterweight was a 3in thick steel rod, to which you could mount weights of various sizes. I don't quite remember how the trigger mechanism worked, aside from it being a string that when pulled, opened a gate that would allow the counterweight to fall. after construction was complete, then we decorated! xD

that horrendous paint job was our attempt to paint it camo. buuuut we ran out of green spray paint after only one side of it was painted. wheels were affixed to the back end for easier transport, an eyebolt was drilled into the side so that the slings (of which we had several, of different styles and design) could be stored with the device itself. to the side we affixed a Rifle Scope that I'd bought in Pigeon Forge years ago, (it barely worked, and was horribly miscalibrated)  purely for looks, we designed a simple set of ‘leaf sights’ like the kind mounted to the side of grenade launchers. also completely cosmetic, lol.

now, on the topic of projectiles, one of the requirements was that it be able to fire a one pound water balloon.

we went a biiiit overboard with that. our trebuchet was so powerful, that at max counterweight (the design was rated for 100 pounds, but we never tested it beyond 97) the water balloons would be ripped apart as they left the sling. as you can imagine, this was a problem. we solved this by layering the balloons, we’d use our finger to push a balloon into another, and then that into yet another, before filling the whole thing with water. these triple-layered water balloons were required for any counterweight in excess of 30 pounds or so.

our maximum range? one hundred seven yards. we literally made a field goal with it. one end of the football field, to the other, and through the uprights. it hit the ground with such force, it actually left a 6-in crater in the sod.

P-N Junction Diode

To draw the characteristics means behavior of current in forward and reverse bias of a semiconductor junction diode. This semiconductor diode either made by silicon or germanium which have atomic number Z=14 or Z=32 respectively. There are some questions related to this science experiment, these can help you to understand its working better.

If you found any question…

So I had my first final today and that was my history essay.

lol jk it was my physics presentation oBViOuSLy anyway so I had my physics presentation today and first of all let me tell you that I had no fuckin idea what I was presenting cus like yeah sure I did the project but I didn’t *do* the project cus I made my partner do all the hardwork and somehow manage to convince him that I did all the work(I don’t even know how I pulled it off) so like he knew everything about our project and I’m just like ...뻘쯤 so anyway we had to present our poster board to the teacher and fuck I had to speak first so I was like fuck it imma wing it and this is basically what happened: ‘sO THIS IS OUR MATERIALS AND DEPENDENT VARIABLE AND INDEPENDENT VARIABLES AND FLAWS AND CONTROL AND YEAH MY PARTNER WILL EXPLAIN THE REST’ but somehow I made it sound really smart and elaborate and my partner(who explained all the complicated stuff) made his part sound pretty ehh and like anyone else who heard my presentation would’ve been like ‘...tf is dis shit an F isn’t even a bad enough grade for you...YOU GET A NEGATIVE L’ but like this teacher was like ‘omg so smart you guys did so well like A++++++++++++++ like omg bravo *wipes tears* so elaborate so nice so gucci so ugh prada fendi beautiful wonderful bravo’ and like fuck I wasn’t bout to complain but after he left, I looked at my board and I was like

fuck

- Physics Project, Kamen Rider Video -

A Physics Project I and few friends in High School did. Can’t believe its already been 5 years. Wow.