Talk:Trebuhole

I say!

A well-constructed, and seemingly quite effective little siege engine you have there! Perhaps a Trebuchet category is officially in order! As to the horse, I had assumed it was to spread pestilence, yes - it was odd that they pictured a horse, as one would generally value them as a mount first and food second. Diseased cattle from pillaged areas nearby were far more common, and could spread anthrax and the like.

As for the Legos, Shoofle, Randall's youngest brother, and I, have been known to enjoy having a couple light-hearted wargames with what remains of our childhood Lego collections, which ought to be available here and here. The rules are at brikwars.com and any degree of nerddom can be supported.

As for the other trebuchet, it's just Bangarang, as in the exclamation from the movie Hook, and presumably translates to "totally awesome." Although the Bangarang does have a certain ring to it...--James. 08:32, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

brikwars.com looks cool, I'm going to have to try it. "The" has been deleted. -- Moose Hole 15:00, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, to what extent was this scaled from Bangarang, what were the weights generally like on your projectiles and weights (or, say, how big were the rocks you were throwing, and what was the arc like when you got a good shot off? --James. 08:43, 28 June 2008 (UI'TC)

I had a bunch of rocks left over from when I put in my leech field which I originally used as weight. Unfortunately, the rocks were not very dense at all. I replaced them with coins an old batteries, topped off with a few random rocks, and it was much heavier (I've never weighed the weight). Most of my successful launches involve light payloads, such as the afore mentioned leech field rocks, and lego horses. Generally I'm too surprised to notice the arc when it does work so it's tough to describe it, but I'd say it's parabolic (duh). The thrown objects probably reach a height of about 5x the height of the pre-fired trebuchet at the apex. -- Moose Hole 19:24, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, sort of what I was afraid of. I'm wondering if Bangarang's not going to suffer from scaled-up versions of those problems. Oh well, enough time and effort, and maybe this thing will one day work like I hope. I wish I had more than a rough-guess understanding of more of the physics involved.--

Well doing a quick web search I found some software that may be of use to you. I'm more of a software than a hardware guy, so I try to stay away from real world math. -- Moose Hole 09:31, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

That's actually the program I based my design upon - I kept mucking around with figures until I got a pretty good balance and range. I'm just wondering if I haven't muffed the original design too badly, but I have no real way of knowing just yet. And so far as real-world math goes, agreed - Randall and I both graduated from the Chesterfield County Mathematics and Science High School at Clover Hill High School, and while I'm ostensibly mathematics-inclined, I sure don't much enjoy it in any case.--James. 18:02, 29 June 2008 (UTC)