A war-wolf or trebuchet is a device used during the Middle Ages to throw rocks at castles and now sometimes used to fling large vegetables and pianos as a sport. A simple trebuchet is shown in the figure below. Model it as a stiff rod of negligible mass, d = 2.60 m long, joining particles of mass m1 = 0.115 kg and m2 = 68.5 kg at its ends. It can turn on a frictionless, horizontal axle perpendicular to the rod and 13.0 cm from the large-mass particle. The operator releases the trebuchet from rest in a horizontal orientation.
Find the maximum speed that the small-mass object attains when it leaves the trebuchet horizontally.