By Sue Kiesewetter
Enquirer contributor

A catapult designed and built by Tara Davis, Sarah Forrester, and Kate Cook throws a pumpkin. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

MORROW - Teacher Jennifer Finke challenged all gifted students at Little Miami Junior High School: Make a catapult that launches pumpkins.

Eighth-graders Kate Cook, Tara Davis and Sarah Forrester took the challenge and spent about 45 hours over two weeks making their catapult using wood, metal piping, a garage-door spring, a hinge, barbells totaling 180 pounds, lead bars to weigh the base and canvas.

Their machine was one of 10 that lined the soccer stadium at Little Miami Junior High School on Wednesday for the lunchtime competition. It hurled 12-inch circumference pumpkins across the field 71 meters - the farthest.

"The hardest part was just building it, because we had to make so many modifications,'' said Kate, 13. "We must have changed it 20-30 times.''

Kate Cook high-fives Sarah Forrester as Tara Davis walks over | ZOOM |

The girls researched on the Internet to get ideas, but designed and built it themselves. By trial and error they discovered smaller, round pumpkins worked best in the sling launcher and they learned they needed three 60-pound lead bars to weigh down the base.

"We had one test where the pumpkin went through a tree, over the barn and into the creek, about 150 feet," said Tara, 13.

The challenge, Ms. Finke said, was for the students to build the catapults with a base no larger than 2 feet by 3 feet by applying what they had learned about simple machines, levers and energy. Pumpkins launched had to have a circumference of 12-20 inches

Students received credit if they wrote up their findings as a research paper.