Engineering Challenge 2 Catapult

Activity Overview

Our engineering challenge unit continues this week with a prompt for students to build a catapult. Throughout this process, students will try to solve a problem by observing, creating, testing, reflecting and iterating. Each of these experiences will support students practice independence and critical thought. Furthermore, students will specifically examine measurement. In this task, the landing distance of various catapulted objects will be marked and measured in non-standard units (footsteps, cubes, hand lengths). Students will then make decisions about how to best increase the distance based on their observations.

What You Need

• Experiment 256 by Marty Kelley

• Engineering Challenge: Week 2

• A collection of Maker Materials to work with (see challenge prompt for the specific list of what you will need)

Steps

1. Read Experiment 256 by Marty Kelley. Use the guiding questions to think about how the maker built his creations. What did he make? What is an observation? What observations did the maker have about his designs?

2. Follow the instructions for our Engineering Challenge: Week 2.

3. Collect your materials and follow the steps to build your own invention.

Guiding Questions

• How do the pieces work together to make the contraption move?

• What challenges arise while making your project?

• When you mark the distance of the items from the starting point at your catapult, how can you measure how far they went? Can you use your feet to count steps by lining up your feet from heel to toe? Can you measure how far in hand lengths? What else could you use?

• What changes would you need to make to catapult your items further?

• What other items could you select and how could they work in your project?

• Is there anything you would do differently to change or improve your project?

• What other problems can you think of that your machine could help to solve?

Extensions

• Explore the Engineering Challenge Project Bank, and try out a different challenge each day.