Catapult Project Reflection Guiding Questions

1. What was the project about? Why did we do this project? What mathematics (Ms.
Vees class) and design (Mr. Sevillas class) concepts were applied?
- This project was about using something that is captivating to the
teenage mind and a versatile tool for teacher to get their students to comprehend
certain topics. For this specific project, Ms. Vee, my math 2 teacher, used
catapults which are devices in which accumulated tension is suddenly released to
hurl an object some distance to help us, her students, stress our knowledge of
projectile motion equations. Equations to find horizontal velocity, vertical
velocity, time of flight, initial velocity, horizontal distance, vertical distance, and
angle of launch; while a lot of my classmates had speculation of how these
equations could only be applied to this one time experience, they never noticed
how these equations came from a simpler one, one that is constantly messed with
in order to apply with what is necessary. This project required more than just math
to execute, it required design as well. Mr Sevilla, my multi media 1 and 2 teacher,
taught us the Design Thinking Methodologies which consist of empathizing,
defining, ideating, prototyping, testing, and revising through a project prior to this
one. He explained to us that he could supply us with most of what we were going
to need in order to build our catapult and that the Design Thinking Methodologies
would probably be our best way to go through this stage of this project. My
specific experience with my group used the Design Thinking Methodologies to
execute our catapult, which we later defined as an air cannon.
2. Describe the prototyping process. Does your final catapult resemble the
prototype? Why or Why not?

The group I worked with had some tension to it. I believe I have a

good relationship with the other members of my group on a one on one basis prior
to this project, but I knew how some of the group felt about the rest which
consists of the mostly negative judgements some had on each other. I tried my
hardest to tear down some of the awkwardness while we empathized, designed,
and ideated what we wanted to do with qualities I knew they would apreciate of
each other which made that experience enjoyable and memorable. So when we
came to the prototyping process, I was actually out sick most of the time, and
when I came back it was I noticed that there was a strong division amongst the
group. It seemed twice as difficult to get everyone to communicate with each
other making our process even more difficult from that point on. Our final
prototype ended up being what we designed for our air cannon to look like but the
measurements were of. Half of the group made one part of the entire design with
conversions of feet to centimeter and the other half made it with conversions of
feet to inches. I know I took part in this by just not being able to be there and not
communicating with my teachers soon enough the information I had about the
way everyone felt about each other.
3. What were some last minute adjustments you had to make to your catapults prior
to launch date?
-

We had to make a lot of last minute adjustments we had to do in

order to get our cannon to work. We went through a rollercoaster of emotions of

thinking it was ready to launch the way we wanted it to, but oh wait we forgot
about this or yes its going to work, but oh wait it landed right in front of us.
There was this one time I launched it alongside a friend of mine and it worked

beyond what we had expected but when I tried showing my group it had air
leaking from all sorts of locations. We did not have a working cannon by launch
day but luckily both of our teachers were comprehensive and understood the
efforts we had been putting in and gave us two more days to get it done, with
something we were proud of.
4. This question is pertaining to your group research: when making calculations,
what were some of your limitations? What were some things you ignored for the sake
of simplicity?
-

A huge limitation we had when were given time to work in class

with Ms. Vee we had not been able to launch our canon once and record the
information. While we did take notes to look back at later, it would have been
better to get it done with her and be able to ask her questions on whether or not
just our arithmetic was correct. A big thing we ignored for the sake of simplicity
was the PSI that we were going to launch into the canon because if we took that
into account for what it did and how it affected velocity we would have gone
through more than just five equations to get through the math part of this project.
5. What were some of successes you experienced while working on this project?
- As a group, our greatest feeling success was getting the canon to
work after so many frustrating moments. Other moments we had of 100%
accomplishment was when we constructed the base and got it rolling because that
caused a lot of frustration and work ethic problems amongst all of us, it felt 10x
greater than what we expected to have it done. Something that was bittersweet,
was when the cannon actually launched something, but it only landed a foot away
from us because we knew we were starting to get there, but still needed
something.
6. What were some challenges you experienced while working on this project?

A great challenge was communication and tension. We constantly

were miscommunicating which caused a bunch of setbacks that couldve been

prevented like a group member feeling that she was not part of any of the process.
Of course, we also faced the dilemma of the cannon actually working which
caused a lot of our original design to be thrown out the window. There was
constant arguments of whether or not to give up on our design of an air cannon
and just build a catapult that can launch some distance.