Engineering Students Compete in Catapult Competition

"Nothing hits a tennis ball like a tennis racket," explained COD engineering student Christopher Jones.

With that in mind, Jones and his partner Justin Lauterbach began to construct a catapult that would propel them to second place at Saturday's competition at Harper College in Palatine. 

With some wood, yellow bungee cords and screws the duo watched as the apparatus shot the tennis ball 175 feet. 

Just 20 feet short of their competitors and fellow classmates, Slawomir Namojlik and Nikhil Hariharah. 

Adding a modern twist to the centuries-old trebuchet design, Namojlik and Hariharah were able to capture first place in distance beating out other challengers, including their classmates. 

Nikhil says competitions like this prepare students for life after COD. It has all the components of everything you learn in engineering explained Nikhil. Everything that goes into the catapult design incorporates engineering; how to dissipate energy, building and the use of equations to see how far the ball will go. 

"We're happy we beat our teammates from our class because they held the record and we were close by and we threatened them in class last week and told them that we were going to beat them and we're happy we did that," said Hariharah.