May 24, 2007

Catapult: End of Days

As an engineering project, Dylan and I had to build a catapult, and we decided on a Scoop-A-pult. Our report is here. But, since our project ended a couple of weeks ago, we had to get rid of our catapult, otherwise we'd lose points based on how long it remained in the classroom. Have I mentioned that our catapult weighed 80 pounds?



SO, after school one day, Dylan and I took our catapult to get rid of it. We couldn't figure out what to do with it because neither of our parents wanted it at home and we didn't have cars, so we just took it into our school's auditorium (known as the Pantheon) and set it on center stage, facing towards the audience. We stripped all the pulleys, ropes, and metal parts off of it because they were expensive, but we left the majority of the catapult just sitting there. Mission Accomplished!

The next day after school we walked by the auditorium and saw the catapult sitting in the hall. Mission Not-So-Much-Accomplished. Oh well, we figured we could just leave it in the hall and nobody would mind.

Wrong.

The next day I was hunted down by the theater teacher and told to get rid of the catapult . . . or else.

Fine.

Dylan and I took the catapult, went outside, and carried it down a flight of stairs towards a courtyard that our school has. We set it near the middle of the courtyard and left it there, figuring that somebody was bound to take it. The next morning, sure enough, we looked outside and it was gone. Mission Accomplished.

Two days ago I walked into my engineering class and the catapult was sitting there.

Mission Not-So-Accomplished v2.0

I couldn't believe it! To use Dylan's analogy, it was like The Mask! It just kept coming back! Apparently, from the courtyard it was taken into the gym (which is nearby). The junior class had a recess the other day (don't ask) and found the catapult to be quite amusing, so they started shooting stuff in the gym. The administration didn't like that, so they hauled it all the way back to the engineering class.

At this point we realized that we couldn't get rid of it. Our teacher told us to rip it apart and throw it away. We decided that that'd be the best course of action, so we whipped out the drill and started taking the screws out, only to find that all the screws were stripped.

Hm.

CROWBARS! It took 45 minutes, a lot of noise, and some yelling, but in the end, here's what our catapult looked like:



Carnage! It was so fun tearing it apart though! A nice stress reliever, because the end of senior year is stressfull (not academically, more of in a dealing with underclassmen way). We did keep one part of the catapult, the swing arm, which Trevor played with.



Our catapult is now a bunch of wood chunks in a dumpster. God rest its soul.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Creepy. I'm pretty sure the catapult was stalking you! :)
Anyway, carnage of wooden projects = good. (I did that with a large Spanish project this year. It was very exciting to rip apart something we had spent days constructing.) Definite stress relief. On a side, only a few more days before this year is FINALLY over. Yay!

José P. said...

Nice catapult.

Anonymous said...

You would've liked CalTech Prefrosh Weekend. We were given hammers, crowbars, axes, mallets, gloves, and safety glasses, and the task of putting an entire piano through a hole about 4" across. (The piano was really old and a piece of crap that was ready to be gotten rid of anyway.) 'Twas fun. =D (And yes, I'm going to MIT, not CalTech, but nerdy fun is nerdy fun.)

Also, that countdown to graduation is pure genius. Me: 26 days, 21 hours, 2 minutes, 38 seconds...

~Caroline F.

De Petagma Saru said...

Wow, that reminds me of my Spanish project from last year.

1. Take large 10-layer piñata off of ceiling.
2. Get rid of ≈ 7kg of piñata goodness.
3. Gym, Spanish room, other classrooms, and outside didn't work.
4. Place large amounts of fireworks in piñata, light, and enjoy the show.

That was sooo the best way to end 10th grade...

Anonymous said...

I heard somewhere... "It's easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend!"

Anonymous said...

One pardons to the degree that one loves.