trebuchets

[truepenny]

Talking today with friends WA&ANOLJ and somehow the topic of trebuchets came up, inspiring us to wax reminiscent about this episode of Nova, which remains one of the coolest things I've ever seen on television.

And in honor of trebuchets, and of papersky and matociquala, who have both lobbed out turnips this week, some trebuchet links:

Trebuchet.com is splendidly self-explanatory.

Apparently, in Texas, trebuchets are sporting equipment. And they're working on one that will be able to hurl '57 Buicks.

The Grey Company is a re-enactment society in Perth. They have a fairly extensive paean to trebuchets.

And here's pages on the physics and the algorithmic beauty of the trebuchet.

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I want one of the ones that hurls buicks.

I live in Nevada.

I bet they're legal here.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Do you remember the trebuchet (piano, coffins, lake) in Northern Exposure?

Not long after the series ended, its builder (http://www.eskimo.com/~verne/jw.htm) sold the thing to the city of Corvallis, just down the road from me, for use during their wonderful da Vinci Days art and science festival (http://www.davinci-days.org/). For a couple of years in the mid-90s, they'd set the thing up in a field behind a local school and ... fling stuff. One year it was old kitchen appliances. One year it was dead computers (stripped of all reusable parts). Sometimes they'd throw a watermelon or two in for the *splat* factor.

It was awesome. Oh, they pretended it had some educational value by giving people paper and pencil and asking them to calculate the trajectory of the loads, but it was mostly just an opportunity to watch a 45-foot, 5-ton, impressively elegant piece of primitive weaponry hurl pallets loaded with Stuff and watch it arc a loooooong way through the air before going *SMASH*.

Evidently the liability got too much for them, and for a while the city tried to sell it (http://www.davinci-days.org/archive/99/trebuchet.html), evidently without success. Last I heard it had been donated to a local Renaissance Faire, but I haven't heard anything about them setting it up again. (It requires a throwing area the length of a couple of football fields to really show its stuff).

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I have amused my housemate by reading parts of this and Jez's comment aloud, but I'm really just here to ask, what is your puppet reading? Is it Shakespeare?

[owlfish]

I hadn't looked at your writing in weeks and you post on trebuchets just in time for me to come look. I taught a class on 'em just last week! I could even bring in a little model with me, but avoiding fully demonstrating it for fear of student injury.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

[papersky.livejournal.com]

My military consultant H, wanted to build a trebuchet in high school metalworking. They wouldn't let him, but they did let him build a three-quarter sized arrow-firing catapult. They tested it in the gym, and the first (metal) arrow fired buried itself two feet into the concrete back wall -- at which point he was told he'd got the grade and made to dismantle the thing.

He's always wanted the chance to make another, or even better a trebuchet.

The enthusiasm with which he developed the post-Roman war-machines which appeared in The King's Name was slightly scary.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Who knew the turnips would become so famous?

Heh.