Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com. We're Smart happens him Marshall Brain with today's question, how does a catapult work? There are three different technologies that fall into the catapult category. They include the catapult itself, the ballista, and the tributche. The catapult is a winch down bucket that people normally think about when they hear the word catapult. A ballista is a very large crossbow. A tributee is a weighted beam that swings a sling
carrying the projectile. Both catapults and ballista's work by storing tension, either in twisted ropes or in a flexed piece of wood, in the same way that an archery bow does, but on a much larger scale. A tribute tends to be easier to build because it consists simply of a pivoting beam and a counterweight that rotates the beam through an arc. Catapults can launch things a fair distance. Five hundred to a thousand feet is common. It's surprising how much energy
they can store. The winch is important on a catapult because the winch allows one person to put a great deal of energy into the catapult over a long period of time, then all that energy releases at once throwing the projectile. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com