To be pedantic, that’s still covered under E
I don’t know of a single engineer who has never built a trebuchet.
I’m not even a “proper” engineer and I have like, five desktop trebs, 2 ballistae and some other odds and ends (3d printed, of course,)
It’s like, a right of passage or something.
I have a scar over my eye from a trebuchet I built in high school, then I went to college for engineering, so that checks out
yeah. Gotta be careful with them.
even the desktop variety has a lot of energy in the system.
Probably better than the scar my cousin has on his thigh from an ad hoc fulcrum catapult.
Uhoh, this about to turn into that scene from Lethal Weapon where they are comparing scars…
I’m a software engineer and I built a trebuchet during lockdown to launch Easter eggs at the neighbours’ gardens since we weren’t allowed to go see them.
The plastic candy-filled kind…. I hope.
Or. I hope they weren’t very good neighbors….
No, tiny bits of hidden software. It’s not a very efficient way of distributing code, but it was fun.
Yeah. You’re not allowed to stuff Easter eggs for Easter.
Also, we’ll add “get the Halloween candy”, too. Probably give people apple 2’s or something,
Rember kids, if you find a USB stick in your easter egg, run home and plug it in to get free candy in Roblox.
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I’m a software engineer, but now I feel like I need to build a trebuchet.
I’m a machinist, which is kind of engineer adjacent. We make cannons.
Cannons are just trebuchets with extra oomph
Cannons are fun too.
In CNC as well, can confirm, cannons are made
btw, it’s a rite of passage.
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Mother, 33, stops being a scientist to do science.
scienceengineeringSiege engineering to be precise
And M. A lot of M actually. And S. Also T. Put some A in it to make it not threatening.
no M here. you can just launch shot and need no M to explain it. have you ever had fun?
I mean, if this were 1400 AD, sure…
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Anyone else find it weird how articles often tend to add the parental status of the subject in the title?
Only if it’s about a mother though.
I guess being a mother is considered an important life achievement, while being a father is not.
You do get to be a father in news articles. Mainly when they talk about you being deceased though.
I think it’s more that, for some, becoming a parent is their only life accomplishment, so “reader engagement” is literally, “hey, overlap these two circles, or the middle won’t buy our crap.”
I guess it’s bait for people who like to judge. The idea could be: it’s not responsible to quit science for this and being a mother makes irresponsible choices even worse. That’s not my point of view, but I know people whose life seems to be so empty that they feel a constant need to look down on others and the “mother” information gives them at least 5 more minutes of talking shit about how this is a terrible decision.
I see it the other way around. Older people eat up clickbait news, and older people tend to be parents, so identifying the woman as a mother makes them go “she’s someone like me” while identifying her as a scientist is less likely to resonate. It helps some people imagine themselves in her shoes.
It’s been this way since the inception of the news paper. To sell papers they needed to get people invested in the subjects of the paper. That included giving information about the subject of the articles that other people might relate to. If you’re a mother you’re more likely to be inspired by a mom of 3 who went for a degree in science and ended up becoming a “Trebuchet Master”.
Since they specified female, there is presumably also at least one male trebuchet master as well, meaning that the UK considers trebuchets important enough to have multiple trebuchet Masters.
The new alternative to Trident. It’s cheaper to have trebuchets posted around the coastline than nukes scooting around on submarines and offers about the same amount of protection from the country being nuked.
offers about the same amount of protection from the country being nuked.
Sadly true lol
It’s the cheapest means of getting fresh beef from point A to point B. I am surprised burgericanos haven’t discovered it yet
Now hear me out…Railguns
They said cheapest, not fastest. Ain’t no UK business got railgun delivery money…
OK now we have the stem girls’ attention
There’s a restaurant on the outskirts of bangkok that launches a whole rotisserie chicken from a slingshot over the guests tables and impales on a spike on the helmet of a guy on a unicycle next to your table
Being “trebuchet master” without “Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics”… doubt
Sounds like multidisciplinary peak perfocmance to me.
I would, too. Which is the more exciting job? Unfortunately there probably isn’t much call for a trebuchet bombardment these days.
Fun fact, only one trebuchet has ever been deployed for combat in the new world.
The conquistadors and coalition forces built one during the siege of Tenochitlan, they tried to fire it but the sling snapped, rock went up, rock came back down.
Thus ended the storied military record of trebuchets in the new world.
That’s fascinating! You should update the Wiki on trebuchets.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Trebuchet
Clearly someone has pulled a Scots Language Wiki and has been writing bullshit on that article for years
Not yet.
Perhaps this should be decreed in a new Geneva convention as the only allowed long range missile system? That would make wars less deadly and more useful.
What’s the distance on those things?
Over 300 meters. Truly the superior siege engine.
But I still love the Ballista.
I’ve made several over the years for demonstrations using a couple 2x4s, 2 oak dowels, a steel rod, and nylon rope that’ll hurl a “bolt” (tube used to separate clubs in a golf bag with a tennis ball on one end) 400 yards.
They’re just fun.
Depends on the mass of the projectile, and how the throwing arm is tuned.
If its release is tuned for distance and they’re flinging period-accurate projectiles, tuned firmly distance a typical period tree could throw stones about 300 meters.
Depending on the kind of fortifications they were against (and if they had siege engines of their own, or other artillery- bow and arrows, whatever) they might set up a little closer and tune instead for more forward velocity rather than range.
The typical mass was about 200-300 kilograms, or a small sedan. You could go heavier, but that typically reduced range.
200-300 kilograms, or a small sedan
A small sedan weighs about four times as much as that
Get out of here with your facts.
(for what it’s worth, a reliant robin was about 450 kilo curb weight. I’m sure we can find a car that weighs in the range.)
You sent me down a little rabbit hole, depending on how one defines sedan, the lightest I could find is the Peel P50 at roughly 60 kg. A better fit weight wise could be the Isetta at roughly 350 kg.
But neither option, including the robin feels like a proper sedan to me, and only the robin really checks the basic requirements.
Afaik the term “sedan” doesn’t really define the amount of wheels, but I don’t tend to think of a three wheeled vehicle.
So the first four wheeled sedan style car that came to mind was the Trabant, but that’s still 600kg.
Idk what the point of this text is…
Have a nice day, I guess?
AFICT, sedan is basically anything that’s not specifically something else.
Mostly, I used the robin because it has a very loyal fan base, for being such… an interesting little car. I was half expecting someone to jump on me being like “don’t you dare”.
In any case, the biggest issue is think timing the release. Like. With boulders or rocks or whatever, it’s really just a matter of geometry.
The CoG of a boulder in a sling (or gummy bear or dot, or whatever, really,) is pretty predictable.
For a car, though, it kinda pivots in a wonky way because of how they’re usually attached by the tow hooks, with a tether that gets released at the end of the throwing arm. It makes it hard to predict where the CoG actually is. (In the video I posted- and most of them, they botch the release, leading to it flying more up. I’m not sure how much more range they can get, but it was released fairly early. Maybe on purpose.)
“They would have been pulled up to a castle, maybe 200-300m away and they could have launched rocks, boulders and flaming boulders into castles,”…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-65099834.amp
And cheese my cows. They could launch cows as well.
search YouTube “punkin chunkin”
1000 meters easy.
wait they did not ask for 10 years experience in the field?
100 hours of aoe2 and we’ve got a deal
Oh, I got that! Do you think the Brits will accept a foreigner from a place that wasn’t one of their colonies?
Best I can do is 80 hours of Besiege, take it or leave it
Scientist in the UK wear surgical caps and carry stethoscopes? I guess doctors are a subcategory of scientists.
Clinical research i’d guess
Doesn’t becoming a doctor involve researching something new in the field of medicine?
You’re thinking of a PhD doctor. Medical doctors don’t have to research or publish anything new.
Drag isn’t convinced that physicians are real doctors. Real doctors do research.
Interesting that “Mother, 33” doesn’t have a name
Have you never read a newspaper before?
As a retired toolmaker, I see your trebuchet and raise you the artillery piece I made for myself - a small Coehorn mortar of about 50mm/2" bore.
I’ve known 2 toolmakers that have built their own full scale full functional Gatling guns from scratch also.
The military will need skills like that once modern civ collapses later this century.
Probably makes more money as a trebuchet operator too
Building a trebuchet to hurl rocks is stem though
It didn’t say she builds them though
Behold the return of the Mighty Trebuchet Memes!
