Trebuchets

Floating Arm Trebuchet

Learning from the reliability issues of the whipper trebuchet, my trebuchet group 'Family Guys' built a floating arm trebuchet for the 2025 Trebuchet Day. Through, building the base and arm was more complicated than the whipper trebuchet, we built it better but in the same amount of time, thanks to experience.

Advantages

• Critical: the trajectory of the sling during launch is simpler and much less finicky (more reliable!) than the whipper trebuchet.
• Uses less weight than a standard trebuchet.
• We can easily fine tune the range by adjusting the projectile mass. We already optimized the weight and other design considerations for Trebuchet Day, and changing them takes longer.
• Required less testing time than the Whipper Trebuchet.
• The floating arm trebuchet looks cool!

Disadvantages

• The trebuchet requires weight-centering maintenance every 2-4 launches to avoid misfires
• It's not as weight efficient as the whipper trebuchet, but the tradeoff for reliability is worth it.

Initially, I wanted to build a small-scale proof of concept, but I didn't have time to refine and test it.

Whipper Trebuchet

Tasked with launching water balloons at our physics teacher hiding in a mini castle from 35m away, we 'The Algebros' built a whipper trebuchet to efficiently do so. The base is about five feet tall, and the arm is about 63 inches long. It launched water balloons from 100 to 200 feet. Even though our balloons missed the castle during the 'official' shots (two even went backwards), our treb successfully launched projectiles inside the castle during numerous test fires. All in all, it was a fun project, and I will soon work on the CAD for the next attempt.

Check out our video!

For more lore, check out the tech binder:

Mini Hinged Trebuchet

During Freshman year, my science class was tasked to make miniature versions of the trebuchets that launched water balloons at the physics teachers. These mini trebs were supposed to launch ball bearings at a mini replica of a physics teacher inside a mini cardboard castle. My group luckily succeeded in hitting the mini physics teacher, earning us bragging rights and a few extra points.

Check out my reflection for more information: