Catapult Culminating

In grade 10 we’ve been working though our culminating task where we build catapults to launch pompoms.

We use the app Visual Physics to help us analyse the trajectory of the launch.

We can identify the axes, the scale, and then locate the pompom over time.

The data can then be interpreted with another app, which can pull the data points into a table of values, and/or a graph which can be smoothed.

Students then determine the vertex, the x intercepts, the y intercept from the table and the graph, and use this to answer questions like where should a target be placed, or if the catapult is launching from a chair or a desk of different height, where should the target be located on the floor.