The Physics of Chucking a Pumpkin into the Air with a Trebuchet This Autumn (VIDEO)

First Posted: Oct 05, 2015 04:48 PM EDT

It may seem strange, but people are in the habit of chucking pumpkins. Each year, hundreds of people test their mettle by creating a trebuchet and then seeing how far they can hurl a pumpkin across a field. But how does trebuchets work? And how far can you actually cause a pumpkin to fly? It all has to do with physics and now, we're taking a closer look at these flying pumpkins.

In order to learn a bit more about the pumpkin chucking of today, we need to take a closer look at the origins of the trebuchet itself. The trebuchet was first designed during the Middle Ages as an invaluable Medieval siege attack weapon, similar to a catapult. Instead of pumpkins, armies would hurl heavy stones in order to destroy castle or city walls. It's believed that the origins of the trebuchet stem from China, and may have been developed from the stave sling.

So how does it work? Essentially, a trebuchet is a combination of a lever and a sling. A very large force is applied to the shorter end of the arm, while the load (in Medieval times a rock but in modern times a pumpkin) is on the longer end of the arm. The large force that's applied is usually weight, consisting of earth, stand or stones. When the arm is released, the large force falls with the help of gravity, and the pumpkin is hurled into the air.

How long your beam is, how heavy your counterweight is and how heavy your payload (what you're hurling) is all determines exactly how far the payload actually flies. That's not considering weather and wind conditions, as well.

With that said, a trebuchet actually works very much like a golf swing. In fact, you can think of a trebuchet as an upsidedown golf swing when it comes to the physics of it. The optimal release position for a missile hurtling from a trebuchet is such that the beam on the counterweight side makes an angle of 45 degrees with the vertical. In addition, the length of the longer arm of the beam should be 3.75 times the length of the short arm of the beam. And the counterweight should have a mass that's about 100 times greater than the mass of the payload.

Each year, there's the world championship "Punkin Chunkin" competition. The current world record for a trebuchet hurling a pumpkin is a staggering 2,835.81 feet. And once the pumpkin lands, it essentially explodes into pieces.

With that said, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to know that pumpkins can still do damage. In fact, during the competition in 2013, one pumpkin smashed into a vendor's coffee table, destroying it.

Creating a trebuchet of your own isn't that hard, either. You can easily construct a smaller version of the ones at the competition, which are usually massive machines.