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Showing posts from August, 2013

Summer Fling

There’s one thing about summer that is a constant throughout the years – popsicles (and popsicle sticks) are awesome! Since I am a packrat and I see crafting potential in virtually anything, I always wash and save the popsicle sticks when we’re done. Who knows what we could build or do with them later. Well today, we decided to use a few of our stash and make a real catapult for no reason other than the fun of seeing how far we can fling stuff. First I explain how a catapult works - it works just like our arms do when we throw things. A catapult is loaded with whatever you want to throw and then it goes back a bit and then forward, releasing whatever it holds. How far we can throw depends on how long our arms are, how strong they are, how far we move them before release and how heavy what we are throwing is. We start with those principles and begin crafting our catapult. The arm/stick strength is fixed but I show them how we can vary the length and movemen