Mechanical engineering students Don Best and Steven Gong looked far into the past to create a weapon of slight destruction. The seniors recreated a steam powered cannon originally designed by the Greek mathematician Archimedes in 200 B.C.

The two were approached by their instructor to work on the project, and since February have been working on the cannon which is now in its third design phase.

“I love working on the project, on top of calculations it’s quite intensive,” said Best, of the project that was once illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci and named “Architronito” after Archimedes.

According to Best, the hardest part of the project was trying to make it safe and not worry about explosions from the barrel, since it is basically “taking theory and trying to make it work.”

Best and Gong’s version is called a flash cannon, and works by heating the expansion chamber of the cannon with briquettes and injecting water into the bottom of a pipe that leads to the chamber. The water turns to vapor, providing the energy that pushes the projective. Their cannon is about 5 feet long and weighs approximately 110 pounds. They were able to get some parts donated for the project, but spent nearly $500 of their own money and endless hours.

A similar cannon was featured on the Discovery Channel show “MythBusters” and students and faculty from the SF State School of Engineering were called upon to help with the calculations when the show’s model did not perform as expected.

Best, along with engineering lecturer Mike Strange participated in the MythBusters experiment. Strange said the MythBuster’s cannon propelled a 27 pound cannon ball about a quarter of a mile, when it was expected to shoot over ten miles. It also took one to two hours to launch.

“It’s been fun to work on,” Gong said. “It’s a challenging project because there are a lot of intangibles to work on to get it working correctly.”

In addition to hoping the project is a succes, the two must also take their grade into consideration.

“Our grade depends on whether it works or not,” Best said. “It’s complete, it just has to work.”

The two recently test fired the cannon using a piece of fiber glass wrapped in duct tape a little larger than a golf ball and were able to propel it more than 30 feet. Gong and Best plan to continue working on the project over the summer.

“Right now it takes 10 to 15 minutes to get it to going, imagine (how long) it took the ancient Greeks to fire a cannon,” Gong said.

If Gong and Best are able to launch the cannon successfully, their work could be featured in a small segment of “MythBusters.”