Trebuchet

In the summer I became interested in trebuchets, and one weekend in the lab I spontanously decided to build one. You can see the result in the photos. It worked quite well, throwing it's payload about 2 meters. The counterweight consists of four AA cells.

I made it out of ceramic tubes lying around in the lab - scrap, or so I thought at the time. These are ideal for trebuchets - immensly strong and lightweight. They are also unbelievably expensive, and my supervisor Ane got rather pale when I showed her my "work" the Monday after. Turns out the "scrap" was the box of the most expensive parts - so expensive that they even keep small pieces of a couple of centimeters length. Ane appraised my trebuchet to a couple of hundred Australian Dollars.

Ooops.