Your student builds a functioning trebuchet from wood or popsicle sticks, then uses this trebuchet angular momentum lab sheet to investigate how changing counterweight mass and lever arm distance affects both moment of inertia and how far the projectile flies. The sheet walks through background on the formula L = Iω, a structured hypothesis section, a four-trial data table recording counterweight mass, counterweight distance from pivot, and launch distance, and four analysis questions that ask students to connect results to the concept of angular momentum. This experiment suits grades 5-8 and works especially well within a physics unit covering rotational motion or classical mechanics.

As a standalone unit study activity, this lab sheet gives your homeschooler a complete experimental sequence from building to testing to calculating. The optional step asking students to estimate moment of inertia using I = mr² pushes the sheet toward upper middle school or early high school level work. Completing it demonstrates that your student can control variables, average repeated trials, and reason from data back to a physical principle, which is exactly the kind of hands-on learning that makes abstract formulas stick.