Water balloon ballista

[karinka13]

trebuchets actually work pretty well. me and alicia (looneylin) did something like that for a physics project freshman year. we got tennis balls to go pretty far, but then again we used a pretty good amount of weight.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by karinka13

trebuchets actually work pretty well. me and alicia (looneylin) did something like that for a physics project freshman year. we got tennis balls to go pretty far, but then again we used a pretty good amount of weight.

Must have been a better release than ours. We had a stuff sack full of rocks, and some of them were pretty big ones.
Ryan, if you do build a trebuchet, I recommend the following: Make everything strong, brace it solidly, and have a Boy Scout on your build team if you can't use bolts or something similar .

[Tytus Gerrish]

make a crossbow. it's hard to make somthing better than that

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by Tytus Gerrish

make a crossbow. it's hard to make somthing better than that

Nobody has suggested the perennial favorite, the "cone cannon". A funnel and two lengths of surgical tubing (length varies by desired range) are all you need. Poke a couple of holes near the edge of the funnel, tie on the surgical tubing, a couple of friends to hold the ends of the tubing and you're ready to launch. With a little work you can get the accuracy pretty good too.

[Simon Strauss]

the only experience with things like this that i have had was with a trebuchet for an elective in the 8th grade, it was three and a half feet tall when not cocked and used 15lbs of counter weight, i managed to launch a tennis ball 42 ft at my best and 36 on average. As far as a ballista goes id stick with the classic design (just like the one used in the ostrich egg launch episode of junkyard wars) and just modify it by a muzzle to guide perhaps. by classic i mean this (you have to give some credit to history that even though they didn't have what do tech wise, that they perfected their weaponry to an extent.) the muzzle i have in mind should be containing the water balloon at its cocked state(this can be done by having it cut so that the top half covers and entraps the balloon and still allows for movement of the sling, then becomes a full pipe after the head part) also if you haven't seen it already http://www.trebuchet.com/ is a great site and should help