In this week’s Manufacturing video, we’re learning about the elasticity of materials and how certain materials are more elastic than others!

Once completed, send your videos to designingthefuture@PennStateOffice365.onmicrosoft.com with “Your Name – Week Three Manufacturing Submission” as the subject line.

Materials needed:

• Popsicle Sticks
• Tape or Glue
• Rubberbands
• Regular-Sized Marshmallow

Your goal with this week’s challenge is to build a device like a little catapult with the listed materials which is capable of launching the marshmallow. There are a few rules though.

You can not touch the marshmallow as part of the launch or directly apply force to it (e.g. make a handle which you use to throw the marshmallow), you have to use the elastic properties of your materials to launch the marshmallow.

Take a picture of your device and take a video of you using it. Once you have done that try to improve the design by changing parts of it or by making a new one altogether and see how the performance changes.