Develop and plan 

Share your design concept: 

Materials: 

-Popsicle sticks
-2 syringes
-patristic tube (pipe)
-Duct tape
-wooden basket/box
-wood triangular block 

Photos: 

Design Concept

How it Works 

Develop a plan for preferred design: 

Success criteria: 

-Able to launch/fire a small ball  

-Teaches students about energy transformation  

-Clearly shows mechanical, potential and kinetic energy  

-Students can have fun playing with the toy  

-Safe to use and appropriate for classroom environments  

-Uses a lever  

Explain how you used design thinking practices to arrive at this iteration of your toy/device. 

Our success criteria stated that our product should be a toy that is fun for children to play with while demonstrating energy transformations. While researching about precedents, we found out about a catapult toy that clearly demonstrates potential and kinetic energy. In the beginning, we wanted to create a simple catapult toy controlled by buttons. However, we decided to iterate this design to involve a syringe lever when we stumbled upon a lever device that is controlled by 2 syringes compressing on each other. We took inspiration from the design, and we decided to implement this design into our catapult. We combined the two design ideas into a design concept. We decided upon a catapult that is controlled by a syringe lever. After our concept was developed, we started looking for materials and planning our design. We took measurements of the materials and iterated our models and plans according to our available materials.