Hello I am Jared with funsciencedemos. In a previous
video, we highlighted a catapult design that was inspired from this book, "those darn squirrels," by
Adam Rubin, where a grumpy old man gets frustrated with a group of squirrels, because they keep trying
to raid his bird feeders, and those squirrels are quite ingenious. They design a catapult to get
around the obstacles that the old man builds and they draw up some beautiful blueprints and,
our catapult idea was pretty ingenious too. Toda
y we are back with another catapult design
idea. Now in our other video we launched toilet paper tubes that look like squirrels. Today, we
have to launch something different. Today we might be using a marshmallow for materials.
We are going to need two rulers, a clothes pin, a binder clip, maybe some tape, and a rubber band,
and then some kind of cup or container. That is used to hold our squirrels. To start our build,
we are going to attach these two rulers at one end using some tape, and t
hen a binder clip. We are
going to zoom in, so you can get a better look at how that all happens. So we have zoomed in, so you
can see how we are going to do this. We are going to line up the rulers, so they are perfectly even and
then I am going to take a piece of tape. Make sure it is firmly attached to that ruler, flip it over,
keeping the rulers totally even and wrap tape on that side. Now I also would like to to run another
piece of tape on the inside, and be careful because you do nee
d that extra little bit of space, so the
rulers can fold into each other. Another piece of tape and now I am ready for the binder clip. Squeeze a binder clip, center the rulers,
and I like to flip up the lever arms, and now I am also going to run a rubber band
around the binder clip just to keep the rulers squared up. So I have one
rubber band already secured around the lever arms. Now I am going to secure another
rubber band around the base of the binder clip or body of the binder clip jus
t to
make sure those rulers do not slip out the edge and one more time, and now when I try and
pull these apart, I can feel the energy and the resistance that is going to power my catapult. So
now I need a wedge that would actually separate the arms of my catapult. For that I am going
to use a wooden cloth pin. As the cloth pin moves down my catapult, the launch arms, it is going
to squeeze that end and create a nice wedge. So here we go. Start at the outer edge, and I am
going to slide th
is down, and I want to try and keep it right in the middle, so you can see I
might need to now come and push the cloth pin in. I want to get it back as far as I can. Now you
can see my catapult really take shape and I need to tape this cloth pin in place with a few pieces
of tape for the top and the bottom. So I have my cloth pin taped into place, top and bottom, and
let us see how the catapult works. Yes, I have some energy that can help launch my squirrel. Now
I need to make a basket that
is going to hold the squirrel. I could use a small cup or a plastic cup,
even a paper cup trimmed down for a little basket. I am going to need to cut some slots, so that the
cup can slide onto my catapult launch arm. So you can see, I just made some slits into this small
cup, and the nice thing about this is I can slide the cup into different locations on my launch arm
to see how that impacts my squirrel when I launch it. Does it impact the height of the launch or
the distance of the launc
h? That is something cool we can play around with. Now comes the fun
part inspired by the book, the launching in the book. The squirrel's first launch launch attempt
did not go well. They ended up hitting a tree. Hopefully we can do better. Now this is where
we get creative. We can make different things our squirrels. We could use big marshmallows, small
marshmallows, goldfish, candy, erasers; I even found little fruit snacks that look like different
animals. We are going to try launching t
hem all directly at the camera and see how they go. Now
as a true scientists would do, we could measure our launches to see how effective they are. We
can measure how long they go, and how far they go out. We can measure how high. We could even time how
long they stay in the air. We can try adjusting our catapult to see which part launches the furthest.
Let us give these all a try. The big marshmallow. 3, 2, 1! Launch small marshmallow. We could try a
whole bunch of small marshmallows and l
aunch squirrels. Let us try some Goldfish. Let us put them
all in. Fish Fly! Hershey Kisses have a flat bottom, it launches really well. Rollo candies - flat bottom.
Yes that is good. Two Hershey Kisses! Even better! A handful of Skittles. Taste the rainbow! Some erasers.
Good, good, good. Seasonal erasers and then the fruit snacks. Oh, they launch great! The coolest part about
this catapult is not how well it launches, but how simple it is to make. Two rulers using a wedge of
a clothes pin
held together with some tape and a binder clip. Well I could use different materials
that I have that are just as simple to make a different type of catapult on this one. You can
see my cloth pin in the center, but I used popsicle sticks held together with a binder clip. For a
little container, I used a bottle cap lid. Then I thought what if we make this catapult bigger and
instead of rulers, let us use meter sticks. Binder clip, meter sticks, but instead of a cloth pin
for a wedge, I need
something bigger to separate my catapult, so what if I used a roll of tape,
and you can see the same principle in action. As I slide my tape down I have pretty much the same
model as my smaller one. I am going to have to hold that in place and now I use the water bottle, top
part of a water bottle here. I can adjust it the same way, and I have a bigger version of the
Catapult, and I wonder does this work as well as the smaller version. Well, let us give it a try.
Here is the marshmallow co
ming at you. Now if you look carefully at my catapult, you will notice, I used
two meter sticks for the top launch arm, and that is the interesting part. I could try stacking a third
one or go back to one meter stick to see if I get a difference in how far that launches my squirrel.
All of these catapult ideas were inspired by the great book by Adam Rubin, "Those Darn Squirrels." If
you want to learn more about forces and motion and other catapult design ideas, check out our
YouTube channel
funsciencedemos. Science is so cool especially when I can super size
something and launch it into the air. Thanks for watching!
Comments
Great fun!