In physics class this year we studied "projectile motion" where the students used equations to predict how a ball will move through the air. As our end-of-semester project the students will be building catapults from Popsicle sticks and rubber bands. This experiment will show them just how fun that a problem can be by using a real catapult to launch a ball and videotaping it as it flies along its path. Then they will analyze the video, use it to get important data such as initial velocity, flight time and angle of launch among others, and compare it to what their equations predicted. They will then use their experimental data to predict a target site using a previously unknown launch height and see how close they hit the estimated target. This will show that the equations in our physics textbooks are actually worth the paper they're printed on.
