備註請放最後面 違者新聞文章刪除
1.媒體來源:
外媒 Gizmodo
2.記者署名:
Tom Hawking 湯姆 霍金
3.完整新聞標題:
YouTuber Fulfills Lifelong Dream by Blasting Through the Sound Barrier With a
Home-Built Trebuchet
YouTuber 用自製投石機突破音障，實現畢生夢想
4.完整新聞內文:
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 用自製投石機突破音障，實現畢生夢想
為什麼？為什麼不行？
湯姆 霍金
發佈於美國東部時間2026年9月22日下午1:45。
閱讀時間：4分鐘
湯姆·斯坦頓和他的超音速投石機
根據YouTuber Tom Stanton自己所說，他從 12 歲就開始製作投石機。成年後的
Stanton 是一名航空航天工程師，但投石機顯然仍然是他的摯愛—在他最新影片的開頭
，他解釋說：“使用像投石機這樣的純機械發射器將彈丸加速到（空氣中的音速）一直是
我多年的夢想。”
來這裡感受遠大的夢想，留下來欣賞迷人的工程技術，因為儘管這裡有穿著工裝短褲的男
人聽到音爆在他家後院迴盪時即興跳舞的熱情洋溢的書呆子氣，但這裡確實有一些真正有
趣的設計和問題解決方式。
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.
正如史丹頓在引言中所解釋的，他的投石機設計是基於配重，這大概就是你想到投石機時
首先想到的那種設計。 （當然，前提是你確實想到了投石機—不過，既然你在讀這篇
文章，那……）總之，配重式投石機的工作原理是從高處落下重物。重物連接在一個繞著
支點旋轉的機械手臂的一端；機械手臂的另一端連接一個吊索，將重物放置在吊索上。重
物下落時，會帶動機械手臂的另一端一起下落。這使得機械手臂的另一端向上旋轉，進而
帶動吊索做弧線運動，將重物拋向任何擋在它路徑上的不幸目標。
如果你想向固定工事投擲重型彈丸，這當然很棒，而這正是投石機的設計初衷。然而，史
丹頓的設計目標卻有所不同：最大限度地提高彈丸的速度。為此，他最初使用的彈丸重量
僅為6克（約0.21盎司），但在影片中途，他將其減重至4克（約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.
投石機的彈丸之所以如此輕盈，正如斯坦頓在文章開頭不久所解釋的那樣，是因為配重式
投石機存在一個根本性的限制：重力。配重下落的速度有限，這意味著它能為機械手臂提
供的能量也有限。此外，除非你想建造一台能讓重物從幾層樓高的地方自由落下的投石機
，否則配重的下落距離也是有限的。史丹頓的設計所面臨的大部分工程挑戰都集中在如何
克服這些限制。
他的解決方案既簡單又巧妙：他沒有將重物直接連接到投石機臂的一端，而是使用滑輪系
統，透過纏繞在3D列印線軸上的繩索將下落的重物與投石機臂連接起來。這實際上起到了
類似齒輪機構的作用：他使用的滑輪系統使得繩索的展開速度遠快於重物，並將這種速度
傳遞給了投石機臂。
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.
為了讓機械手臂達到所需的旋轉速度，他用輕質3D列印材料製作了它，反覆試驗了好幾種
設計，最終找到了一種兼顧空氣動力學效率和足夠強度的方案。他還把機械臂做得比普通
投石機上的要短得多；賦予彈丸速度的槓桿的大部分長度都由吊索提供，吊索纏繞在機械
臂的長軸上，當繩索完全展開時，機械觸發器會將其釋放。
最終的成品投石機作為攻城武器來說，實用性如同檸檬三明治一般微不足道；然而，作為
一種純粹利用機械力加速小型彈丸的手段，它卻著實令人膽寒。在最初的測試中，使用10
公斤（22磅）的配重，機械手臂從靜止加速到每分鐘1100轉僅需1.3秒。 6克重的彈丸以
每小時328英里的速度從彈弓中射出，而史丹頓的探索才剛開始。
首先，他們得推倒重來，重新設計投石臂，然後進行更多測試，再經過幾次捲軸迭代。最
終，在觀看了20分鐘的YouTube影片、耗費了六年時間進行設計、無數小時的測試、思考
，以及無數次的想像之後，他們成功了。史丹頓的投石機配備了40公斤（88磅）的重物，
並在幾英里長的空曠場地進行發射，這枚承受4g重力的彈丸確實達到了超音速。投石臂以
每分鐘2342轉的速度旋轉，彈丸以每秒346.6公尺的速度從彈道中射出，相當於每小時776
英里—比空氣中的音速快9英里/小時。
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.
事情就是這樣。整件事有一種奇特的感染力，一種真切的人性—或許在這裡更容易讓人
產生共鳴，因為這台特殊的投石機並非用於戰爭和破壞。我的意思是，誰需要超音速投石
機？不需要。但我們人類做了很多我們不需要做的事情；這正是我們之所以成為我們的重
要原因之一。只要我們用心去做，我們就能憑藉計算尺的計算把人送上月球，或者用手工
工具和耐心建造出像安提基特拉機械那樣令人驚嘆的東西，或者發現培養皿上生長的黴菌
或許能拯救無數人的生命。或者，我們甚至可以在後院建造一個突破音障的東西。只因為
想這麼做。
5.完整新聞連結 (或短網址)不可用YAHOO、LINE、MSN等轉載媒體:
https://reurl.cc/4Y8jov
6.備註:
能聽到音爆回音好屌XD
6年除了可以讀完小學，也可以完成童年夢想噢！