Creating a Supersonic Trebuchet

Hackaday reports that engineer Tom Stanton has built a trebuchet capable of launching projectiles at supersonic speeds. By modifying the design with a gearing system and a rope-wound mechanism that forces multiple passes around the arm, Stanton created a device with a microsecond-precise release window. Early tests with a ten-kilogram weight achieved velocities around six hundred thirty-four kilometers per hour. When Stanton scaled up to the full forty-kilogram weight, the first attempt reached eleven hundred fifty-two kilometers per hour—just shy of the sound barrier. After further refinements and using a lighter four-gram projectile, the trebuchet finally succeeded. The arm spun at twenty-three hundred forty-two rotations per minute, sending the projectile out at one thousand two hundred forty-nine kilometers per hour, breaking the sound barrier with an audible snap. While trebuchets are no longer weapons of war, Stanton's demonstration proves they remain compelling physics experiments.

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