PLACENTIA : Students Catapult to Days of Yore

Students with weapons took over the Tuffree Middle School campus during lunch on Thursday, firing 18 shots as students and teachers cheered.

Cheered?

Well, the weapons were hand-made catapults, and the ammunition--tennis balls coated with white chalk--sailed harmlessly over the crowd.

As part of the school’s Medieval Pageant held Thursday night, students in the Science Club made the catapults and entered them in a contest to see which design would throw a tennis ball the farthest. Successfully defending his title was Matt Browne, an eighth-grader who launched the ball 226 feet.

His secret? Bungee cords.

“You need five bungee cords on the top and two on the bottom,” Browne said. “You get the most tension that way.”

The purpose of the contest, as well as the entire Medieval Pageant, was to give students a chance to see how people lived during the Middle Ages. Students spent weeks turning the Language Arts building into a castle complete with turrets and a fake brick facade.

On Thursday, many students wore elaborate costumes to school and practiced the roles they would act out later that night.

“The pageant brings that time period out of the books in a way the students can really understand,” teacher Liz Greenhill said.

Science teacher Nancy Rudd said students in the Science Club spent several weeks researching how catapults worked and studied pictures and drawings of those used during the Middle Ages. Building the ancient military devices not only gave the students an understanding of physics and engineering, but also how architecture was influenced by the weapons available.

“We try to show them the big picture,” Rudd said. “We want them to see the world isn’t divided up into subjects but that everything is related.”