The Marble Launcher Made of Junk

The project I am most proud of is the spring-powered marble launcher I made in grade 12 for my physics class as part of a group project with one of my friends. We made the launcher for marks of course, but it was fun making and firing the launcher as well. Because we were cheap and lazy the launcher was mainly made of junk I found around my house. The only things I bought to make the launcher were the compression springs I used for propulsion and the pipe that served as a barrel. Even the sight for aiming the launcher was made cheaply, it was just a piece of plastic inside of an old pencil grip. My friend built the sight but I did most of the actual launcher’s construction including the barrel and firing mechanism. The firing mechanism in particular was wonderful because it was several short compression springs I taped together with a little platform for the marble to rest on taped to one end and taped to a cork at the other end, I then shoved the whole thing into the barrel I made by drilling holes in a pipe where it was held in place by tape and friction. Drilling those holes into the pipe was probably the worst part of the whole project because I drilled them into the pipe working on a piece of wood on top of my freezer in the basement, without a vice or grip. It was hard for the drill to get a grip on the plastic of the pipe at all, and once it did it took a while to drill through. After I finished drilling holes in the pipe I inserted the firing mechanism into it, which worked by compressing the springs and locking them in at the desired level, then you would select a firing angle spaced at 5-degree intervals. Unfortunately, I was to lazy to design an aiming mechanism that allowed for a full range of angles so I settled with holes in the cardboard backing where I would stick a piece of wood for the barrel to rest on. Pretty much everything else on the launcher, including the base, was made of corrugated cardboard, which is possibly the worst building material known to man but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on this so I worked with what I had. After assembling the barrel, I tested it out thinking that the marble was just going to drop out of the barrel and go nowhere, but to my surprise it actually went quite the distance down the hall in my basement. When I handed it off to my friend to test and calibrate it he got it to work pretty reliably, each time it was fired with the same setting it went approximately the same distance. When we finally brought the launcher into class for assessment it stood out among all of the others and people were interested by it because it was different. Most of the other launchers looked a lot more professional and were made of sturdier stuff than corrugated cardboard. Surprisingly my teacher was fond of the fact the launcher was made primarily of old junk and enjoyed its cheap construction. The cheap construction of the launcher is the primary reason I take pride in it, because I was able to make a fairly sturdy and effective launcher out of cheap materials and construction methods. On a related note the main lesson I took away from making the marble launcher was cheap components and cheap construction methods can go a surprisingly long way; that you can make something that works well without the best or most expensive materials at your disposal.

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