Homemade catapults like this coffee can catapult are great fun to explore and create science to use in experiments for kids. We have previous explored making homemade catapults by making a rolled paper catapult and an egg carton catapult. This homemade catapult continued our exploration of using recycled materials to create catapults.

The only drawback to using a recycled coffee can to create with is the smell. To eliminate the smell we had our coffee can sit in the sink with hot soapy water for half a day. The coffee grains scent  had really permeated the plastic in the coffee can. When we had drained the can and dried it off, it smelled more like the lemony scented dish washing soap we had used. A lemony scented can smells much better than a coffee scented one.

The actual creation of the catapult itself took no time at all. We simply place two large rubber bands around the coffee can. Our coffee can had a ridge near the top of it that the rubber band easily slipped into. Then we placed a plastic spoon under the rubber band. We lucked out and had a coffee can that had curves on its sides so that coffee drinkers could easily pick up the container. We place a plastic spoon into one of those curves. The spoon was able to swing back into the curve after the catapult had launched the object in its bowl.

If you buy a different brand of coffee that comes in a can with a different design, you can still easily make this catapult. The brand of coffee that my husband likes just ended up working out really well for this project.

 

How to launch this catapult:

• Place the object you want to send sailing through the air into the bowl of the spoon.
• Pull back the bowl of the spoon as far back as you feel is necessary to get the object to fly.
• Release the bowl of the spoon and watch the object fly.
• Push or pull the spoon up higher or lower if you are not happy with how far the object flies.

Types of objects to send flying in the Homemade Coffee Can Catapult:

Tips

• Heavy object fly farther ( We started with pom-poms and they didn’t fly very far.)
• Small objects that fit in the bowl tend to fly farther too.

We tested:

• Pom-Poms
• Pennies
• Pebbles
• Marbles
• Dried Beans

I hope you will try making this homemade coffee can catapult. Please let me know what object flew the best for you in this science experiment for kids.

Here are two other catapults we have made:

Egg Carton Catapult

Building a Paper Roll Catapult