Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The latest in pumpkins and technology

Just in time for Halloween, students at the Illinois Institute of Technology held a contest to see which student group could build the most effective launching device for a 20 pound pumpkin.  With a budget of $300 per team, 19 teams applied their engineering and physics skills to building a very simple catapult from wood and weights.  No electricity or explosives were allowed.  As a group, the competitors thought that a toss of 100 feet would be a great result, so they were thrilled when the winning team’s pumpkin flew 234 feet.  While that’s nowhere near the “pumpkin chucking world record” of 4,434 feet, that record was achieved using compressed air cannons.  One extra bit of trivia:  It’s believed that whether a pumpkin travels 234 feet or 4434 feet, the amount of mess to clean up is roughly the same.

To leave you with something a little bit spooky, here’s time-lapse video of what your pumpkin endures when you forget to toss it out with the trash, or feed it to the pigs:

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 10/31 at 08:26 PM
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