Students will observe a surprising catapult phenomenon, generate and refine investigable questions about how design variables affect energy transformation, and produce a focused research question with a testable hypothesis grounded in elastic potential and kinetic energy concepts.

Students will design a systematic investigation plan to test how a specific catapult design variable affects launch performance, ensuring their methodology matches their research question and includes clear variables, procedures, and quality controls before collecting any data.

Students will systematically collect launch performance data from their popsicle stick catapults, documenting conditions, measurements, and anomalies in organized research notebooks so their evidence base is strong enough to support later analysis and conclusions about energy transformation.

Students will transform their catapult trial data into meaningful visualizations, identify patterns and anomalies, debate interpretations with peers, and connect evidence back to their original research question and hypothesis about energy transformation.

Students will draw evidence-based conclusions about their catapult investigations, explicitly acknowledge limitations, generate new research questions, and present their full investigative process to an authentic audience during the Catapult Carnival.