Trebuchet Project Reflection
In this project we were tasked with making a trebuchet from a time period of our choosing and making it launch the furthest it could go. The other part of the project was representing the time period and era which our models came from. The purpose of this project is to help us understand speed, direction, velocity and other physical attributes. This helped us problem solve and fix our trebuchet prototype design using a variety of techniques.
The way to throw a projectile as far as possible is to throw it at an angle of 45 degrees. You also want to maximize potential energy so you can later release it into kinetic energy. But you can't have too much or else it will not work and go straight into the ground. So you need to add the correct size weight for your trebuchet. Also you need to make sure you have the correct measurement on your arm to get the correct angle and height so it can go as far as possible when you launch. This along with minimizing air resistance from your projectile and making it accelerate at the correct speed should make the projectile go as far as possible.
In this project we used many 21st century skills such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity in the trebuchet project. While working on the trebuchet project we had to work with a lot of people to get it done on time. This meant we had to work together effectively and share our ideas in a way which other people in our group could understand. We also had to be creative to solve problems that arose during the construction of the trebuchet. For example my group did not have a counter weight so we had to communicate with another group to uses some of their weights. Another thing that we did was think critically on what we could actually get done in the time period that we had. Like do we have time to rebuild this? To wrap it all up we used many 21st century skill during this project and it helped us grow as students.
During this project the biggest challenge was working with other people in the group. This was difficult because some group members didn't want to work with the other people in the group because of past experiences. Also some group members would not talk to the rest of the group before making changes on the project. All of these problems and more made it more challenging to work on the project but we just had to deal with them. You can clearly see that that the biggest challenge was getting people to work effectively together and communicate with each other.
The personal strengths that I brought to my group were work ethic, creativity and communication. My creativity helped my group problem solve and gave us some ideas. Evidence of this is that the group chose to use my design. Also communication helped us get weights for a counterweight from another group by talking to them. Work ethic helped my group because I came in during lunch and some exploratory periods to get work done. As you can see I brought my skills to the table to make the project as best as I could.