Science gets pupils all fired up

BRITTON BROUN/Dominion Post

BOMBS AWAY: Palmerston North Boys High School learn how to use a scaled-down Roman onager - but the less was about maths and science, not warfare.

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Ancient engines of destruction will become part of a Palmerston North high school syllabus - to teach science, not warfare.

Artillery builder Murray Hill trained teams of Palmerston North Boys High School students yesterday to use a variety of ancient catapults, including a medieval weight-operated trebuchet and a Roman siege weapon known as an onager.

The versions they used were too small to smash a castle wall, but nonetheless the onager, known as Chucky, could hurl a croquet ball about 120 metres.

Mr Hill said the catapults demonstrated some advanced mathematics and trigonometry and he would be working with teachers to develop learning modules.

"You can get quite useful data from them," he said, and the children were more likely to remember it when they had collected it themselves.

"It's not just an academic activity. I wish they had had them around when I was at school."

Year 9 maths student Nick Shaw, 14, and his mates were rapt to be loading and firing weights across the sports fields. "It's pretty cool. I reckon it will help [with maths] because it shows us how they work."

Afterward, they went back to the classroom to plot graphs and analyse the maths behind the levers.

Howard Pinder, the school's head of maths, planned to make the catapult modules part of the syllabus next year and said the school was looking at buying its own.

"They've got a huge practical application for us, for physics, statistics and for just basic maths."