Ms. McDaniels hands out the description for the final project a month before it's due even though most of the class will procrastinate on it for at least two weeks. "This is our second year doing this project, and I think it was a lot of fun last year! I hope you all have fun with it this year too. Lab partners have been assigned randomly; check the table on the back of the sheet. I'll be holding office hours after school every Tuesday if people want advice."

Honors Physics 1 final project

Your final project is to use what you have learned in class this year to build a machine capable of launching a standard golf ball as far as possible, plus a written report describing how your machine works and the physical principles involved. 50% of your grade (50 points) will be based on the report, and the other 50% will be based on the distance your golf balls travels on the best of three attempts, with one minute to make adjustments to your machine before each attempt. 1 meter = 1 point. Yes, distances more than 50 meters are worth extra credit! Testing will take place on the football field on the last day of class (May 3rd).

The rules:

* No buying pre-built machines! You must build your machine using standard raw materials from a hardware store. This means no disassembling an appliance, either.

* No explosives

* No gunpowder

* No chemically powered mechanisms of any kind, I mean it

* No compressed air

* No human or animal muscle power at the moment of launch. You may use muscle power to store energy in the system, e.g. by winding a spring or pulling back an elastic band, but you may not directly apply a force to the golf ball with your body without an intermediate energy storage step. It should be possible to launch the golf ball by pressing a button, pulling a trigger, or similar.

This project should be doable on a budget of less than $50, but if you need help affording materials come to office hours and we can figure something out.

The table of lab partner assignments on the back of the paper says that Wei Wuxian has been paired with Brenda Banner.