3 ms·
Physics Rediscovered #6: My trebuchet is bigger than yours
- metalman 2y agoBurried in hackaday is the work of a newly minted mechanical engineer who designed and built a trebuchet that has supersonic launch velocities. found it https://hackaday.com/2021/12/01/supersonic-projectile-exceeds-engineers-dreams-the-supersonic-trebuchet/ https://hackaday.com/2021/12/01/supersonic-projectile-exceed...
- abecedarius 2y agoChecking: it's 6 tons dropped 2 meters to launch a 100kg payload. If straight up, it could go 6000*2/100 or 120 meters. Visualize a launch for range vs. for height, and guess it can go roughly twice as far horizontally as up. (The OP ends up at 210 meters.)
- DoctorOetker 2y agothe ideal angle for maximum horizontal displacement is 45 degrees
- n4r9 2y agoAssuming zero windspeed, I assume?
- 4gotunameagain 2y agoNo, assuming zero air whatsoever :). With drag, it is less than 45 degrees. Source: I once upon a time ran a simulation because I was curious. The magnitude of the offset from 45 degrees scales with drag coefficient & frontal area
- abecedarius 2y agoYep. But calculating what horizontal distance that implies, in your head, doesn't seem trivial the way my note above was.
- abecedarius 2y ago(I think the difference between the OP's calculation and my estimate all comes from their 80% efficiency vs. my assumption of 100%. My 'roughly' twice as far as high is actually exact under ideal assumptions. Where the slope of the inverted parabola is -1, the chord is 4 times the height, but in this parabola only half of the launch energy goes into upward motion, accounting for the other factor of 2.)
- jasonpeacock 2y agoFor superior trebuchet performance, you want a floating arm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_arm_trebuchet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_arm_trebuchet