Levers, inclined planes and pulleys, oh my!

Madelyn's class has been blissfully working on designing and constructing 'frisbee flingers' made from simple machines for the last month or so. Yesterday, they put their machines to the test. The event had it all: high hopes, a hint of competition, and A LOT of duct tape.

Here is Madelyn's inclined plane. This was her contribution, along with a lot of cheerleading, conflict mediation and a roll of duct tape. Unfortunately the student responsible for the lever failed to bring it to class. So this was all the group had until they finally asked to borrow another group's lever at the last possible second.
This is the remodeled version after the first 'fling'. The group solved some problems it was having with their design by borrowing from other groups and well, more duct tape. Their farthest fling was an impressive 52 inches.
The other kids were bored waiting for the groups to get organized so they headed to the park across the field. It made for some good photo ops and gave me an opportunity to actually watch what Madelyn was doing.