Physics Rediscovered
We just explored how medieval engineers managed to hurl stones the size of body-positivity activists at people, causing them some mild inconvenience. All of that without knowing the classical mechanics that we do today.
We'll actually do something more useful. We will consider the energies in the system. The vibes maaaan. Oh, and also some integrals... kind of.
The trebuchet is a gravity weapon. The really heavy counterweight goes down, the throwing arm goes up. The rock flies. Simple.
In reality, some poor schmucks first need to get the counterweight up. However, as any good story would do, we will ignore these anonymous henchmen, who do all the work and focus on the main hero - potential energy.
Any mass changing position in a gravitational field in relation to the center of that field, gains or loses potential energy. Potential for what? To fall on somebody's head and make a terrible mess. As the counterweight gets lifted into position it gains some potential energy to waste later.
We can figure out how much that actually is. In order to do that we need to recreate the conditions similar to those when the trebuchets were actually fired.
