Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The physics of projectiles / catapults essay
Catapults physics
Catapults physics
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The physics of projectiles / catapults essay
Tension is defined as the pulling force exerted from an object to another object. Tension has been used for ages to keep things still or to hold something up. Tension stores energy when something gets more and more tense, which it then releases when the pulling force is quickly stopped such as having a rope that is tensed cut. Tension is very important to physics. Tension is a major part of a catapult, which provides its function.
Catapults are huge projectile-launching devices which have been used since medieval times. Catapults use tension when they used to use ropes to hold the basket with whatever object is loaded into it. When the rope was cut, the basket would fling upward and the object in the basket would be launched very far. The catapult was often used in warfare where they would load giant rocks into the basket and fling these rocks at the enemy.
Catapults have been very important and useful devices throughout history. The first catapult was invented around 400 BC by the Greeks. It has mainly been used for warfare and has been used both offensively and defensively. The catapult was a very important weapon up through the medieval ages, where more technologies came out and the catapult was used less in warfare. The catapult was always ahead of its time, especially because of the physics involved. The catapult is only usable because of tension, which makes it possible to fling things with it. The tension involved is essential to the operation and use of a catapult, and the more tension the catapult has the more powerful it will be and the more far it will travel.
Gravity is also an important piece to catapult. Gravity pulls objects and people toward the center of a mass, which is typically planets in this case. Gravity ...
... middle of paper ...
... major role in everything people do. Gravity makes all of the important things such as machines or activities people do actually occur. Gravity is also essential to any machine, because they generally need a solid ground to be on. If you were to use a catapult without gravity, you would fling the payload and it would keep flying. It would never hit the ground. Gravity is essential to the success of catapults and just about everything else.
Tension, catapults, and gravity are all very important concepts. They all work with one another as well. Tension is the way that when ropes get pulled and store energy. Catapults utilize both tension and gravity in order to launch projectiles. Gravity keeps things from leaving the ground and makes things eventually come back to the ground if they were in the air. These different parts make it possible that these all work together.
Furthermore, if we look at the distinguished Scientist Isaac Newton and his acclaimed laws of gravity we can understand some of the thinking tools he used. Mr. Newton’s imagination and inspiration was a key player during the scientific revolution era. “Legend has it that, at this time, Newton experienced his famous inspiration of gravity with the falling apple.” (Bio.org, 2017)
CATAPULTS The catapult, was invented by the Romans, and plays a large role in the siege of any castle. Besiegers could fire 100-200 pound stones up to 1,000 feet. The catapult was used to destroy buildings and walls inside and outside of the castle walls, it could also destroy an enemies moral by throwing severed heads of comrades, they could spread disease by throwing shit and dead animals in, and they could destroy wooden building by throwing bundles of fire in.
We will now look at the physics of a trebuchet. “The trebuchet uses many different physics applications, we will look at a few of them. Basically a trebuchet is a fulcrum.
Another type of catapult is the Onager. Onagers were used right up to the middle ages with the Trebuchet, when gunpowder and the Cannon were invented and eventually replaced the catapults.
The definition of a projectile is an object that the only force acting on it is gravity. Projectile motion is the path the projectile takes. We saw and used this topic a few times in our project. The first time we saw it was when the marble was flew out of the pipe and was in the air. The second time we used the topic to make sure the trains fell on the lever in the correct spot so the golf ball would roll. The third time it was used, was when the board fall on the balloon. It fell as half of a parabola since it started standing up.
For almost as long as civilizations began they have been fighting against each other. Often times these wars come down to who has the better military equipment. When one army creates an elite war machine another army is sure to soon copy or improve it. For example the U.S. Army Signal Corps purchased the first ever military aircraft in 1902 (Taylor). Two years later the Italians were also using aircrafts. The trebuchet catapult is no exception; it was one of the most destructive military machines of its time (Chevedden, 2000). A trebuchet works by using the energy of a falling counterweight to launch a projectile (Trebuchet). In this research paper I intend to explain the history and dynamics of a trebuchet catapult.
First we will examine the primary factors involved with projectile motion in an ideal situation, where no air resistance is involved.
Bottle rockets are great models to examine Newton’s three laws of motion. The bottle rocket will remain on the ground until an unbalanced force, water, thrusts the rocket upward. This is defined by Newton’s first law of motion: an object at rest stays at rest or an object in motion, stays in motion (in the same direction/at the same speed) unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. It is also known as the law of inertia.
Crossbows are a highly effective weapon for hunting and war even in today's standards. The first records of crossbows are from China in the 6th century BC. The knowledge then spreads slowly to the west into Europe during the time of the Roman Empire, the greatest empire of all times. The crossbow remained the favored weapon of war and hunting in Rome until the 15th century when gunpowder was also introduced from China.
Lift is a commonly used term to describe "something" that results in objects moving upwards against the force caused by gravity. This "something" is actually a force in itself. Lift is one of the four main forces that act upon all objects that move through the air. These four forces are:
The history of catapult spans far from ancient time, until modern times with the basic principles remained the same. the designs became more complicated, but the intent is the same (shooting an object, such as rocks, into the air).
This paper will explain a few of the key concepts behind the physics of skydiving. First we will explore why a skydiver accelerates after he leaps out of the plane before his jump, second we will try and explain the drag forces effecting the skydiver, and lastly we will attempt to explain how terminal velocity works.
If a force acts on a body, the body accelerates in the direction of the force. In the example of the force of gravity, small things like textbooks are pulled downward toward the center of the large mass of the Earth, not up into space, even if some people think that this might happen. Isaac Newton was the first to conceive of weight as the gravitational attraction. between the body and the Earth. The force that results from the gravitational attraction of the Earth on its surface is what we call weight. Science has chosen to measure the mass of objects in units that are roughly equivalent to the weight of those objects on Earth.
The system and technique of supplying an arrow with kinetic energy through the tension of limbs has been improved with the crossbow. The big catapults took up once again the principle of throwing stones. It all changed with the invention of the gunpowder. Cannons, guns and handheld weapons assumed the role of bow and arrow. Now, the warlike intention behind the long-distance effect went even more into the foreground.
Projectile motion is the force that acts upon an object that is released or thrown into the air. Once the object is in the air, the object has two significant forces acting upon it at the time of release. These forces are also known as horizontal and vertical forces. These forces determine the flight path and are affected by gravity, air resistance, angle of release, speed of release, height of release and spin