Catapulting Candy Corn

Challenge
Do you know what a catapult is? It is an ancient device used for throwing large rocks. It was mostly used as a weapon to throw things either very far or very high up over walls during times of war. How do you think people built catapults? What are some of the main components to a catapult? How did they make them accurate? These are questions you might need to think about since this month’s challenge is to build a catapult. You won’t be using it for rocks or as a weapon, but to fling a popular candy of the month, candy corn. Your challenge is to build a catapult that either throws the candy corn the furthest distance, the highest, to be the most accurate, to knock down the most items. Bonus points for making one that does well in more than one category.

Your catapult does have some criteria and constraints. Only the materials provided can be used in your design. While testing out your device, there can only be three trials for each category. Each contraption has to be built with at least four different materials. Finally, the catapults should all be tested fairly when launching.

Materials

• unsharpened pencils
• craft sticks
• plastic spoons
• rubber bands
• binder clips
• string
• candy corn

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Hints and Tips for Success

1. Allow students planning and discussion time by having them experiment with the items to see how flexible and movable they are.
2. After experimenting, allow student groups to plan their final design. Include as many ways to improve their contraption as needed.
3. For differentiation, adjust the amount of materials available, show ideas of how to construct a catapult with pictures, take away any of the materials, change the amount of materials needed to be used, set a height, distance, or accuracy requirement. Adjustments could be made to make it more challenging or simpler.
4. Set up dominoes or blocks of some sort that can be used for the accuracy and/or knocking things over categories. Or for accuracy, use a trick or treat bag/container/candy dish for students to get the candy corn in. Be sure to have all catapults behind the same line or in the same spots when judging categories.
5. Connect to science by having students discussing/figuring out the trajectories or using evidence to claim which catapult or material is the best to use for the challenge.
6. Connect to math by measuring how far the candy corn was flung during the trials, graphing the distances of all the catapults, analyzing results, or weighing the candy corn to see if the different masses go different distances.