Throwing knowledge around
It takes medieval imagination and a measure of heart to fashion wood scraps and rubber bands into catapults.
“I know all about this stuff because I did a report on it. We just used standard dowels and wood screws and stuff,” said Andrew Mullin, a 13-year-old from Liberty Lake who designed a catapult.
On Thursday, kids from Liberty Lake Municipal Library’s summer reading program put their engineering skills to the test when they used homemade catapults to hurl a variety of objects at a cardboard bull’s-eye.
They were preparing for a catapulting competition, held today at 10 a.m. at Pavillion Park.
The event celebrates the release of the new Harry Potter book and caps off the Dragons, Dreams and Daring Deeds summer reading program that drew record crowds of 20 to 40 children nearly every day.
“That’s a lot of kids to come every week. We’re thrilled to pieces,” said Pamela Mogen, library director.
A snafu arose when Mogen found that filling water balloons with washable paint wasn’t as easy as she’d hoped. After the balloons flopped, kids loaded two catapults with crumpled up paper, but found the wind wasn’t cooperating.
Grayden Crump, 13, suggested using large marshmallows dipped in paint for the final competition.
Mullin’s catapult had a promising outing, hurling paper ammo about seven feet.
“There are some people that might beat me. Even if they do it’s for fun anyway,” said Mullin, who used pre-made wood dowels to increase leverage.
Others experienced equipment failure at home and were literally starting from scratch.
“We have a catapult, but when we fired it one of the last times to test it, our catapult broke.”
Steven Jensen, 11, made his catapult out of scrap wood, bungee cords and a bottle cap to hold the ammunition. He tried it out at home using golf balls.
“It tested pretty good, but not the best,” he said, adding that sometimes the ball went straight down and other times it went about 10 to 15 feet.
The catapult idea was the brainchild of Mogen, who raised three sons. She added catapults to the lineup to engage boys in the medieval reading theme.
“Catapults were one of the high tech points of the day. I just figured catapults would be irresistible to guys.”