I always thought that the catapult was probably the most fearsome weapon that people had in medieval ages. After all, you could put a great big rock in one of these things and chuck it pretty far probably. And that is exactly what you see in the movies. In fact sometimes you see them toss other things with catapults than just rocks. I heard that in one battle they were tossing cows with these things!

So I tuned into Nova on PBS the other night, and they were doing a show about a catapult on steroids. I don’t know why they never put these things in movies. It is called a trebuchet, and it incorporates more physics than the traditional catapult. This is probably the king of all medieval weapons.

On this show they actually built one of these things. And after they build it, they do what any one of us would do: they shoot it! And it is amazing just how far they can hurl an object with one of these things. They even built a castle wall (much smaller though of course) and pummeled it with rocks. I know it’s not practical, but I would love to have my own trebuchet!

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