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For our freshman Intro to Mechanical Engineering class we got to design and build a water balloon launcher. I think the only requirement was that it was 'safe' for kids to use and was supposed to hit a target 15 feet away or so. Thanks to Dick Wilkins we ran through the entire UDesign process which was oh so much fun for that 3 weeks of wants, needs, benchmarks and all that other crap. Hell yeah team 10.9.

Anway, we basically were going to use a spring loaded catapult out of 2x4s and PVC. After a bunch of trips to the Home Depot and Ace Hardware, this is what our design came out to look like...

The day that we all brought in our launchers and tested them turned out to be pretty disappointing. Only one group actually hit the target out of about 20. We got two crappy, thin balloons that honestly broke every other trial before it even left your machine. Oh well, it was still pretty funny and I hear that Josh still has our launcher at his house and plays with it every time that he goes home.

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