备注请放最后面 违者新闻文章删除
1.媒体来源:
外媒 Gizmodo
2.记者署名:
Tom Hawking 汤姆 霍金
3.完整新闻标题:
YouTuber Fulfills Lifelong Dream by Blasting Through the Sound Barrier With a
Home-Built Trebuchet
YouTuber 用自制投石机突破音障，实现毕生梦想
4.完整新闻内文:
YouTuber Fulfills Lifelong Dream by Blasting Through the Sound Barrier With a
Home-Built Trebuchet
Why? Why NOT?
By Tom Hawking
Published September 22, 2026, 1:45 pm ET
Reading time 4 minutes
Tom Stanton and his supersonic trebuchet
YouTuber Tom Stanton has, by his own telling, been building trebuchets since
the age of 12. The adult Stanton is an aerospace engineer, but trebuchets
clearly remain his passion—and in the intro to his latest video, he explains
that “accelerating a projectile to [the speed of sound in air] using a
purely mechanical launcher like a trebuchet has been a dream of mine for
several years now.”
Come for the big dreams, stay for the fascinating engineering, because for
all the exuberant nerdiness of a man in cargo shorts doing an impromptu dance
at hearing a sonic boom reverberate across his backyard, there are some
genuinely interesting pieces of design and problem solving here.
YouTuber 用自制投石机突破音障，实现毕生梦想
为什么？为什么不行？
汤姆 霍金
发布于美国东部时间2026年9月22日下午1:45。
阅读时间：4分钟
汤姆·斯坦顿和他的超音速投石机
根据YouTuber Tom Stanton自己所说，他从 12 岁就开始制作投石机。成年后的
Stanton 是一名航空航天工程师，但投石机显然仍然是他的挚爱—在他最新影片的开头
，他解释说：“使用像投石机这样的纯机械发射器将弹丸加速到（空气中的音速）一直是
我多年的梦想。”
来这里感受远大的梦想，留下来欣赏迷人的工程技术，因为尽管这里有穿着工装短裤的男
人听到音爆在他家后院回荡时即兴跳舞的热情洋溢的书呆子气，但这里确实有一些真正有
趣的设计和问题解决方式。
https://youtu.be/Co57SfcT-h0
As Stanton explains in his intro, his trebuchet design is based around the
use of a counterweight, which is the design you probably think of when you
think of a trebuchet. (That’s assuming that you do, in fact, think of
trebuchets—but, I mean, you’re reading this article, so…) Anyway, the
counterweight trebuchet works by dropping a heavy weight from an elevated
position. The weight is attached to one end of an arm that pivots on a
fulcrum; at the other end of that arm is a sling in which the projectile is
placed. As the weight falls, it pulls its end of the arm down with it. This
causes the other end of the arm to rotate skyward, which in turn causes the
sling to whip around in an arc and release its projectile toward whatever
unfortunate target stands in its path.
This is great if you want to hurl heavy projectiles at a stationary
fortification, which is of course what trebuchets were designed to do. Stanton
’s design, however, has a different objective: to maximize the projectile’s
speed. To this effect, he starts with a projectile that weighs a mere six
grams (about 0.21 ounces), which he reduces to four grams (about 0.14 ounces)
midway through the video.
正如史丹顿在引言中所解释的，他的投石机设计是基于配重，这大概就是你想到投石机时
首先想到的那种设计。 （当然，前提是你确实想到了投石机—不过，既然你在读这篇
文章，那……）总之，配重式投石机的工作原理是从高处落下重物。重物连接在一个绕着
支点旋转的机械手臂的一端；机械手臂的另一端连接一个吊索，将重物放置在吊索上。重
物下落时，会带动机械手臂的另一端一起下落。这使得机械手臂的另一端向上旋转，进而
带动吊索做弧线运动，将重物抛向任何挡在它路径上的不幸目标。
如果你想向固定工事投掷重型弹丸，这当然很棒，而这正是投石机的设计初衷。然而，史
丹顿的设计目标却有所不同：最大限度地提高弹丸的速度。为此，他最初使用的弹丸重量
仅为6克（约0.21盎司），但在影片中途，他将其减重至4克（约0.14盎司）。
The reason that the projectile is so light is that, as Stanton explains
fairly early on, there’s a fundamental limit on the counterweight trebuchet:
gravity. The counterweight can only fall so fast, which means it can only
provide so much energy to the arm. It can also only fall so far, unless you
fancy building a trebuchet that involves dropping a weight from several
stories up. The majority of the engineering challenges for Stanton’s design
involve working around these limits.
His solution is both simple and clever: rather than attaching the weight
directly to one end of the arm, he uses a pulley system to link the falling
weight and the arm with a rope that wraps around a 3D-printed spool. This
effectively acts as something like a gear mechanism: the pulley system he
uses means that the rope unspools significantly faster than the weight, and
that velocity is transferred to the trebuchet’s arm.
投石机的弹丸之所以如此轻盈，正如斯坦顿在文章开头不久所解释的那样，是因为配重式
投石机存在一个根本性的限制：重力。配重下落的速度有限，这意味着它能为机械手臂提
供的能量也有限。此外，除非你想建造一台能让重物从几层楼高的地方自由落下的投石机
，否则配重的下落距离也是有限的。史丹顿的设计所面临的大部分工程挑战都集中在如何
克服这些限制。
他的解决方案既简单又巧妙：他没有将重物直接连接到投石机臂的一端，而是使用滑轮系
统，透过缠绕在3D打印线轴上的绳索将下落的重物与投石机臂连接起来。这实际上起到了
类似齿轮机构的作用：他使用的滑轮系统使得绳索的展开速度远快于重物，并将这种速度
传递给了投石机臂。
To allow the arm to spin at the velocities he needs, he 3D prints it out of
lightweight filament, working through several designs until he hits on one
that combine aerodynamic efficiency with sufficient strength. He also makes
the arm significantly shorter than it would be on a normal trebuchet; most of
the length of the lever that imbues the projectile with its speed is provided
by the sling, which begins wrapped around the arm’s long axis, releasing
with the help of a mechanical trigger when the rope fully unspools.
The result is a trebuchet that would be as useful as a lemonade sandwich as a
siege weapon, but as a means of using purely mechanical forces to
accelerating a small projectile, however, it’s frankly terrifying. The
initial test run, using a 10kg (22lb) counterweight, takes 1.3 seconds to
accelerate the arm from a stationary position to spinning at 1100rpm. The 6g
projectile rockets out of the sling at 328mph, and Stanton is just getting
started.
First it’s back to the drawing board to redesign the arm, and then more
testing, and then several spool iterations. Finally, after 20 minutes worth
of YouTube video, six years of design work, and untold hours of testing,
thinking and, yes, dreaming: success. Equipped with a 40kg (88lb) weight, and
several miles’ worth of reassuringly empty field to fire into, the now-4g
projectile from Stanton’s trebuchet does indeed go supersonic. The arm whips
around at 2342rpm and the projectile emerges from the sling traveling at
346.6 meters per second, which works out at 776mph—9mph faster than the
speed of sound in air.
为了让机械手臂达到所需的旋转速度，他用轻质3D打印材料制作了它，反复试验了好几种
设计，最终找到了一种兼顾空气动力学效率和足够强度的方案。他还把机械臂做得比普通
投石机上的要短得多；赋予弹丸速度的杠杆的大部分长度都由吊索提供，吊索缠绕在机械
臂的长轴上，当绳索完全展开时，机械触发器会将其释放。
最终的成品投石机作为攻城武器来说，实用性如同柠檬三明治一般微不足道；然而，作为
一种纯粹利用机械力加速小型弹丸的手段，它却着实令人胆寒。在最初的测试中，使用10
公斤（22磅）的配重，机械手臂从静止加速到每分钟1100转仅需1.3秒。 6克重的弹丸以
每小时328英里的速度从弹弓中射出，而史丹顿的探索才刚开始。
首先，他们得推倒重来，重新设计投石臂，然后进行更多测试，再经过几次卷轴迭代。最
终，在观看了20分钟的YouTube影片、耗费了六年时间进行设计、无数小时的测试、思考
，以及无数次的想像之后，他们成功了。史丹顿的投石机配备了40公斤（88磅）的重物，
并在几英里长的空旷场地进行发射，这枚承受4g重力的弹丸确实达到了超音速。投石臂以
每分钟2342转的速度旋转，弹丸以每秒346.6公尺的速度从弹道中射出，相当于每小时776
英里—比空气中的音速快9英里/小时。
So, there we have it. And there’s something strangely affecting about this
whole thing, a real sense of humanity—one that’s perhaps easier to embrace
here because this particular trebuchet doesn’t exist for the purposes of war
and destruction. I mean, does anyone need a supersonic trebuchet? No. But we
humans do many things we don’t need to do; it’s a big part of what makes us
who we are. And when we put our minds to it, we can send people to the moon
on the basis of calculations done with a slide-rule, or build something as
wondrous as the Antikythera mechanism with hand tools and patience, or figure
out that the mold growing on a Petri dish might just save untold millions of
lives. Or we can build something in the backyard that breaks the sound
barrier. Just because.
事情就是这样。整件事有一种奇特的感染力，一种真切的人性—或许在这里更容易让人
产生共鸣，因为这台特殊的投石机并非用于战争和破坏。我的意思是，谁需要超音速投石
机？不需要。但我们人类做了很多我们不需要做的事情；这正是我们之所以成为我们的重
要原因之一。只要我们用心去做，我们就能凭借计算尺的计算把人送上月球，或者用手工
工具和耐心建造出像安提基特拉机械那样令人惊叹的东西，或者发现培养皿上生长的霉菌
或许能拯救无数人的生命。或者，我们甚至可以在后院建造一个突破音障的东西。只因为
想这么做。
5.完整新闻连结 (或短网址)不可用YAHOO、LINE、MSN等转载媒体:
https://reurl.cc/4Y8jov
6.备注:
能听到音爆回音好屌XD
6年除了可以读完小学，也可以完成童年梦想噢！