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==example of the greatest team and a trebuchet.== Now on to business, a trebuchet is a ancient weapon of absolute destruction they used these wooden tanks to launch dead cows and giant rocks to take over castles. In fact, Jason Newton, Trint Bingham, Shawn Joe, and I have made a floating arm trebuchet but that has totally different physics than a regular trebuchet which is what this wiki's about. [|Trebuchet simulator] This is a program to give you a feel on how a trebuchet works. This is a video of how a trebuchet works. media type="custom" key="8570578" A trebuchet has six main parts: the base, counter weight, arm, sling, projectile, and pin. The base is what the trebuchet sits on. The counter weight is what falls make the arm,sling, and projectile increase in velocity. The arm is what the counterweight and the sling are attached to. The sling is what the projectile sits in when the trebuchet is fired the sling travels in a parabolic arc given the trebuchet twice as much power as one without a sling. The projectile is what is being thrown which can be anything from a tennis ball to a annoying tar goat fan.Wolf pack > tar goats. The pin is the object at which one end of the sling dettaches releasing the projectile, the angle at which the sling slides off the pin is known as the release angle. The optimal release angle has been found through many experiments and has been concluded to be 45 degrees. Now time for some formulas to find the range of the projectile we use the formula R = (2velocity * velocity * sinx * cosx)/g X is the optimal launch angle of 45 degrees therefore making the equation R = (velocity * velocity)/g because sin45*cos45 is 1/2 which eliminates the 2 in front of velocity squared. So, if one wanted to find the velocity of the projectile being thrown then we use the range from which, the Kracken gave (Jason, Trints, Sean Joe's, and my trebuchet), which was 172 feet. So 172 feet = (velocity*velocity)/(32.2ft/sec*sec). Therefore, the end result will be an amazing 74.42 feet/sec which translates to 22.68 meter/sec. Since, we have calculated the velocity of the projectile we can calculate the Kinetic Energy of the projectile by using the formula KE = (mass of projectile times the velocity squared)/2. The average mass of a tennis ball is 56.7 grams. So, the Kinetic energy is (.0567Kg * 22.68 *22.68)/2 which equals 14.583 joules of Kinetic energy at the start of the projectiles trajectory. We can also calculate the Potential energy of the counter weight by the formula Pe,cw = mass of cw *gravity * height of counter weight = 20.41Kg * 9.8m/s*s * 1.828 meters = 365.633 Joules of energy. Well, what about the sling? Since the optima angle is 45 degrees between the pin and the sling while, the pin is parrallel with the arm the sling must be equal in length as the arm or the 45,45,90 triangle will not be completed therefore not being able to create the optimal parabolic arc. Heres some videos for your enjoyment media type="youtube" key="-wVADKznOhY" height="390" width="480"media type="youtube" key="3hCyQIWmzS8" height="390" width="480"Funkmaster G's brother. I used these sources: [|www.youtube.com] [] [] []