Catapults! Catapults! Catapults!

[jack-a-pult]

Hello. I am a 4th grader and I need help with a few questions. Also, reason I'm asking you a few quick questions is because I need to interview an expert on catapults for a school project.

1. What is your name and title?

2. Do you think this topic is interesting, useful, or important? If so, why?

3. How long have you been studying catapults?

4.How does the catapult relate to engineering? Moving parts??

5.Do you find that this topic helps in every-day life? If so, how?

6.Do you know how the basic catapult works?

How has/does this weapon affect the the future?

Thank you very much for helping me conduct this expert opinion survey!

[deleted-42343]

Hi jackapult,

I don't think we have any experts that work specifically on catapults. However, we do have some physical science and engineering experts. You might consider rephrasing some of your questions so that they are more general (i.e. asking about studying engineering or physical science instead of catapults). I think the rest of your questions are OK because most physical scientists will be able to explain why learning how catapults work is related to engineering/science. Good luck!

[deleted-71709]

Hi jackapult,

Amy is correct. Finding an expert who works only on catapults will be hard, but I think I can help you. My name is Ed. I'm a Mechanical Engineer. I've designed a couple catapults - for fun. I have even worked with some High School Engineering students who designed and built catapults for a competition. Here are my answers to your questions.

1. What is your name and title?
Ed Neu

2. Do you think this topic is interesting, useful, or important? If so, why?
Catapults are quite interesting. There are many different kinds. All of them have their strong points and their weak points. Although they are not very useful today, at least not for warfare, they were really quite useful to the people who invented them int he Middle Ages. But they are still important today. Understanding them will teach you the mechanical principles of force and leverage. Understanding the different types and their strengths and weaknesses will help you understand what we in engineering call "trade-offs". If you build one and use it, you can learn a lot about a thing called "variability". This is really important in our modern world of mass production. As a matter of fact, we teach a course here to our engineers about variability, and we use real, miniature catapults to demonstrate the principles.

3. How long have you been studying catapults?
We've used them here for teaching engineers for about 10 years.

4.How does the catapult relate to engineering? Moving parts??
I already mentioned how they can teach engineering principals of force and leverage.

5.Do you find that this topic helps in every-day life? If so, how?
Although no one used them today for warfare, we do use the principals of catapults in a lot of modern equipment. One piece of equipment I know of is a baler, used to bale hay for horses and cows. It uses a form of a catapult to get the bales out of the machine. Some baseball pitching machines use a catapult mechanism. A really important use for catapults today is on aircraft carriers. They use huge, steam-driven catapults to get the fighter jets up to flying speed really fast, so they don't fall off the end of the aircraft carrier.

6.Do you know how the basic catapult works?
Yes. There are numerous kinds. Each of them works differently. Here's a web site that shows some of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catapult

7. How has/does this weapon affect the the future?
This is a very old and basic tachnology that will be around for a few more centuries. I don't think it will have a large impact on the future, but I'm not very good at predicting the future either. You should learn more about catapults and then use your imagination to think about this one.

Have fun!