Brilliant! But, but, it takes all the skill out of launching! I suggest you put the protractors up front where the pilot can see them directly. It is no longer necessary that he be looking for that sweet spot in the sky. Wondering about rules and training. Science Olympiad is a training ground for more advanced competitions. Will these launchers be permitted in those events? If not, the SO graduates will be at a disadvantage, they will have to learn to launch without the launcher. That is a set of skills that requires lots of practice to get consistently good launches. Taking the unclipped parts to a remote contest without the yardstick leaves the semicircular part at home. The semicircle might be made to clip on, too. I came here from your build video to find out what this thing is that you are building. It wasn't at all clear what the different parts were for. I can see another use for this, which is to get repeatable launches during glide tests. Glide testing by hand launch includes a lot of variation; some launches will be too fast, some will be too slow, some too high, some too low and the glider uses some of its time in recovery, which is not the steady state glide that you want to measure. This introduces a lot of variance in the resulting data. A launcher such as this, fixed to something like a ladder, can produce very reproducible launches and much more reliable data sets. My attempt to get repeatable launches is here. You may find the folding rubber attach finger interesting. www.endlesslift.com/glide-test-spreadsheet/ My use of measured glides to teach flight physics is here. (I taught a group of kids how to measure the power used by a glider. Later we may measure the horsepower requirement of a rubber powered plane in glide and compare that with what it actually uses in powered flight. Power required to fly is one of the fundamental problems which confronted the pioneers of flight. It is still a fundamental engineering problem for flight.) www.endlesslift.com/simple-gliders-in-the-science-and-mathematics-curriculum/
Nice! I sent this video to my Science Olympiad coach friends.
Where do we learn how to make this?
GENIUS!!!
How to mKe this catapult
Brilliant! But, but, it takes all the skill out of launching!
I suggest you put the protractors up front where the pilot can see them directly. It is no longer necessary that he be looking for that sweet spot in the sky.
Wondering about rules and training. Science Olympiad is a training ground for more advanced competitions. Will these launchers be permitted in those events? If not, the SO graduates will be at a disadvantage, they will have to learn to launch without the launcher. That is a set of skills that requires lots of practice to get consistently good launches.
Taking the unclipped parts to a remote contest without the yardstick leaves the semicircular part at home. The semicircle might be made to clip on, too.
I came here from your build video to find out what this thing is that you are building. It wasn't at all clear what the different parts were for.
I can see another use for this, which is to get repeatable launches during glide tests. Glide testing by hand launch includes a lot of variation; some launches will be too fast, some will be too slow, some too high, some too low and the glider uses some of its time in recovery, which is not the steady state glide that you want to measure. This introduces a lot of variance in the resulting data. A launcher such as this, fixed to something like a ladder, can produce very reproducible launches and much more reliable data sets.
My attempt to get repeatable launches is here. You may find the folding rubber attach finger interesting.
www.endlesslift.com/glide-test-spreadsheet/
My use of measured glides to teach flight physics is here. (I taught a group of kids how to measure the power used by a glider. Later we may measure the horsepower requirement of a rubber powered plane in glide and compare that with what it actually uses in powered flight. Power required to fly is one of the fundamental problems which confronted the pioneers of flight. It is still a fundamental engineering problem for flight.)
www.endlesslift.com/simple-gliders-in-the-science-and-mathematics-curriculum/
is it science olympiad legal
Science Olympiad yes it is. The rules only dictate no metal parts attached to the elastic band and that the launcher be less than 1m long.