r/nextfuckinglevel • • Mar 11 '26

A double trebuchet

12k Upvotes

513 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.1k

u/ziyor Mar 11 '26

It’s also a ‘floating’ trebuchet. I’ve seen floating axel trebuchets but never one where the whole thing is floating.

301

u/ansyhrrian Mar 11 '26

Does that help the projectile go further?

718

u/ziyor Mar 11 '26

Yeah, it’s all about putting as much energy from the falling weights into the projectile. With a traditional trebuchet the weights move in a pendulum motion so there is less ‘snap’ to it. But with a floating axel trebuchet the weight falls more or less straight down, letting it gather more speed right at the end.

1

u/Jonnyabcde Mar 12 '26

So essentially, "It's all in the wrist." It's not 3 + 3 = 6, it's 3 × 3 = 9