It was the final challenge and everything was on the line. I decided to start strong by re-using the mechanisms that we had already used, that we knew worked. First of all I had to adjust the string length for the new travel distance. Once that was out of the way I had to figure out how to, and where to attach the catapult. I decided that I wanted to build a top floor held up by cardboard pillars. I took off the base block from the catapult because it was really heavy. After glueing the catapult to the top I needed to figure out how to make it launch by itself. I made these wings on the back with slots in them for a popsicle stick to hold the spoon down. The stick was taped to a string that attached to the axel down below and was measured so that it would wrap around the axel as the car moved until it became tight and pulled the stick out and the catapult would launch. That didn't work super well because the string wasn't tight and would wrap around diagonally using up more of the string than I wanted, making it launch too early. Then I tried this thing with a bunch of levers and stuff and that was a disaster. I then was out of ideas. I had no clue how I was going to pull this off. I slept on it, maybe something would come to me. The next day was test day and I was ready to cut my losses, but then my good ole buddy ole pal Branigan came into the maker space. He said, "Hey, is this your car, it looks awesome." I said, "No that's Tate's and Ricky's.This is mine." "Oh" He said, "Well theirs looks way cooler." That made things better. "What's the problem?" He asked. "I don't know how to make this launch mechanism work." I told him what I had already tried, and he told me to try out my first idea but to make something for the string to run through so that it would be straight. I used a paper clip and bent it so that there was a small hole in it for the string to go through and I attached it to the car. Sure enough, it worked! After slight adjustments to the string length it stopped in the red zone and launched. I put the ball in it to see where it would go and it had good power but bad accuracy. I played around with different starting angles until it lined up perfectly and made it in.
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ReflectionAuthorBryce Tenney
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