LESSON DESCRIPTION:
Student challenge their engineering and design skills as they use craft sticks, rubber bands, low temperature glue guns and a variety of other materials to create catapults that launch soft pom-poms across the room.

TIME REQUIRED: One Hour

OBJECTIVES:
The main objective of this lesson is to encourage students to “invent” something. While the prototypes that the students will build are required to have certain general features, the actual designs of the catapults are left to the ingenuity of the students. In their catapult designs, students utilize rubber bands to demonstrate a simple way of converting mechanical energy into kinetic energy..

FACILITIES REQUIREMENTS:
Indoors or outdoors; requires table space; tables will be covered to protect them from the low temperature glue; requires access to an electrical outlet.

SAFETY:
Students are given a short lesson for how to use the low temperature glue guns safely. Studentare advised that the pom-poms provided are the only things that should be launched from their catapults.

CALIFORNIA SCIENCE STANDARDS ALIGNMENT

Kindergarden: 1st Grade: 2nd Grade: 3rd Grade: 4rth Grade:   5th Grade:   6th Grade: