Lesson 07: The Knights Before Christmas

Students imagine arriving at a castle with a load of presents for the people inside, but the knights in the castle won’t open the door! In order to get the presents to the people inside, the students will need to build a catapult and fling the presents over the walls. A great amount of force is being applied to the presents in order to transfer enough kinetic energy to them and give them enough speed to make it over the castle walls. Many presents are being damaged when they hit the ground at high speed. Students must solve this problem by designing a way to protect the presents from being damaged as they are sent into the castle.

Students will use crackers to represent the presents. They must design a way to safely transfer the potential energy in the catapult into kinetic energy in the cracker without the cracker breaking upon impact.

• STEM career connections: Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Architecture, Construction
• STEM disciplines: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
• Non-STEM disciplines: English Language Arts