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Photo by Richard Gwin

High school student Alison Janzen, 17, watches fellow student Robby Sattelmeier, 17, both from Whitewater, launch a pumpkin with a trebuchet they built Tuesday at Eaton Hall at Kansas University. KU's School of Engineering hosted a design contest where teams competed using trebuchets to launch objects, including pumpkins.

Ready, aim, pumpkins!

Lawrence High did smashingly well Tuesday in a design contest hosted by the Kansas University School of Engineering. Schools from across Kansas sent more than 25 teams to the competition.

Teams had to build trebuchets - catapult-like machines that use gravity to launch objects, even stuffed pumpkins. The teams were judged in three categories: distance, accuracy to a target the team chose and accuracy to a target a judge chose.

"We did really good," said LHS senior Jacob Grubbs, whose team took first place overall. "We hit our target on their target and on our target." Their farthest distance was just shy of 32 feet.

The Lions also took second and third place awards in the 2008 High School Design Competition.

Tyler Click's team grabbed silver. Their 50-foot toss didn't hurt, but they were a bit off in the accuracy department.

"We got pretty close, within a few inches," the LHS senior said. "We messed up on KU's target, couldn't quite get there. It was kind of in between our two weight sets. They knew where to set it."

The competition offered much more than a free lunch and a day away from school.

"They're learning a bit about engineering, the iterative process, making changes to the design to see how it performs," said Lorin Maletsky, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. "Some of (the trebuchets) are well-made, well-constructed and look quite good."

The seven LHS teams were led by Charlie Lauts, who teaches the college preparatory engineering class the competitors are enrolled in.

"When we get to face other schools, it makes it a little more exciting," she said. "This is a very competitive group of kids, so they have really come through on the whole thing."

The students enjoyed designing their trebuchets and learned that the mechanics behind a good toss is more than just pie in the sky.

"The thing I had the most fun with was probably just working with my hands and not having to do homework," Grubbs said.

Click was happy with the performance of his pumpkin chucker, which he bestowed with an affectionate nickname.

"We used a very efficient design, the floating arm trebuchet," he said. "We named it the F.A.T. Boy, for floating arm."

The only junior high to get pumpkins flying was West Junior High, which brought a team of boys and a team of girls.

"We don't have as much experience as the high schoolers, obviously," said Emily Melton, a ninth-grader. "Their (trebuchets) are really a lot bigger and more complicated than ours, but it's our first year."