Adam's Engineering Catapult

Adam spent about a lifetime of hours. . . I would guess way too many making 2 catapults.  His first one was made out of foam board and it broke, and did not throw a bouncy ball at a target at all.  The ball didn't travel far.  Good thing he started early so he could now waste more time on a different one.

The next one Adam made was out of a mousetrap.  He bought a large mousetrap and ended up using
that one.  The grading criteria is below.  Adam's catapult, missed the target every time, but he had the
lightest weight one and also the least number of parts.

One group hit the target 2 out of 3 tries, but they were a group that has lost every other challenge so Adam was really happy for them and not worried about the impact on his grade.  They were the only group to hit the target.  Theirs was made out of wood.  They spent over 4 hours as a group in the Computer Science building trying to adjust the arm so the ball would accurately hit the target.  That was after it was made so I am guessing they invested several hours too. +they all probably skipped all their morning classes the day of the launch to work on winning this Engineering challenge.

There was one catapult made of PVC pipe and Adam said that one was bad, heavy and didn't hit the target either.

You will be graded based on the following criteria:

Technical Score: (90 pts.)

1. Novelty and aesthetics of design (15 points): scored by a judge.
2. Cost of manufacturing (20 points):

Your score =

Cost = $0.05*(Mass in grams) + $0.50*(every part over eight in assembly)

3. Accuracy (45 points): The average of your three best launches out of five tries.  For this part, your score will be compared with the best one in class.
4. Repeatability (10 points)

Participation Score: (10 pts.)

1. Peer Assessment: 10 points.