This week in Chemical Engineering, our campers got together to take part in a Catapult Challenge. The two teams put their heads together to design catapults that would be able to launch different objects as far as possible. The first challenge: launching a cotton ball. Our competitors readied their catapults and took their shots:
It seemed as if the boys' team would win, but as you can hear in the video, they went over their building time limit and lost a few feet in their launch. Therefore, Challenge 1 went to the girls' team!
The two teams were then given five minutes to make modifications to their catapults with a new object in mind: A metal bolt. Nervous, but excited, the teams once again got together and evaluated how they could improve on their designs. After five minutes passed, Challenge 2 began:
This time it was a clear victory for the girls' team!
But the Catapulting Challenge had one more leg! For the final round, the teams would combine into one in order to build a tower made out of index cards:
With a lot of trial and error, the team found a way to make a tower that seemed to stand up well. They found ways to keep the layers balanced so that as they added more cards, the entire tower wouldn't collapse under the new weight. Once they finished, they were presented with their task: knock the tower down!
But as our instructor counted down, something funny happened:
Although the team was disappointed, they certainly got a good laugh out of watching the card tower fall with surprising timing! Even Counselor Kelsey couldn't help but to chuckle! Regardless of the little misfortune, our catapult engineers certainly had a fun time working together on their projects, and we can't wait to see what other projects they work on during the rest of the week!
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