By: George Barnett
For The Alpine Sun
Alpine Union’s fourth-graders became trebuchet master launchers last Tuesday at Shadow Hills Elementary School’s baseball fields.
175 students from all elementary campuses assembled trebuchets from materials pre-fabricated by the Alpine Education Foundation, and then used the devices to launch all sorts of items down field, from golf balls to real pumpkins.
By: George Barnett
For The Alpine Sun
Alpine Union’s fourth-graders became trebuchet master launchers last Tuesday at Shadow Hills Elementary School’s baseball fields.
175 students from all elementary campuses assembled trebuchets from materials pre-fabricated by the Alpine Education Foundation, and then used the devices to launch all sorts of items down field, from golf balls to real pumpkins.
The event’s purpose was for students to learn the engineering, math and science behind this Medieval siege engine. The program intent is to get elementary students better informed on, and excited by, Alpine Union’s award winning middle school Robotics-Engineering program. Engineering teams from Joan MacQueen Middle School won regional and national titles over the past 12 months.
Superintendent Dr. Rich Newman is designing the extension of engineering curriculum down into the elementary schools through the Robotics-Engineering theme. Robotics-Engineering is a distinctive and sustainable education platform in which Alpine Education partners with AUSD, and helps to fund. It is one of the reasons why Alpine Union is the Destination District of the East County
AEF provided 24 kits of pre-engineered trebuchets as part of learning about engineering and physics. Twelve having three differing length throwing arms were used on Tuesday.
Each unit – some over 10 feet tall – was built by a team of 4th grade students. Each consisted of 25 pieces of fabricated timber and 50 sets of bolts, nuts, washers and braces.
“Our 4th grader boys and girls excelled at assembling of these complex devices.” Said AEF’s George Barnett.
Before launching, students used their Chromebooks to enter the actual physical measurement information of their trebuchets. Then they modeled the expected performance using math software to help them estimate how far different objects would could be tossed.
“It’s been really fun, much funner than I expected,” said Emily Sanchez, 9. “I like how we built them step by step, and then we saw how far smaller things went, and then the bigger ones. It was fun to launch things and learn about inertia and gravity.”
The design and manufacture of the 24 trebuchet units, and the instruction of students, and of the supervising cohort of adult volunteers, in their assembly and safe operation was kindly provided by Alpine’s Chris & Shannon Loarie.
