Odd innovation: Trying to chuck a pumpkin a mile with a homemade catapult
Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile mark, and Jim Hines was the first to run a sub-10 second 100-meter dash. Now, Dan Collins, who works in the Cell Technologies group at GE Healthcare, is attempting to outdo them both by catapulting a pumpkin over a mile to break the all-time record at the Annual World Championship Punkin’ Chunkin’ contest.
“Throwing a pumpkin one mile (5280ft) has not yet been achieved by any machine or cannon at the Chunk, and remains the ‘Holy Grail’ of the sport,” says Collins. The punkin’ chunkin’ arms race has been accelerating since 1986 back when the contest began and pumpkins were thrown by hand at a barbecue.
Now, all manners of inventors, physicists and engineers gather in Delaware each November in front of over 100,000 fans and onlookers and the event is broadcast on national television.
Dan and his team of inventive friends will be featured on Science Channel and Discovery Channel documentaries that air tonight and will rebroadcast Thanksgiving Day.
His chunkin’ weapon of choice? The C-3, a device Collins believes to be his greatest punkin’ chunkin’ machine yet conceived. It is the third-generation of his original launcher, the Chucky, having evolved from wood to a steel frame with hydraulics.
Baby pictures: Here’s Chucky dressed up for an NFL Films shoot, sometime in 2002. “Although it was a valuable teaching tool for us, the original Chucky was not big enough to compete seriously with the big boys of the sport, and that’s what we wanted to do,” Dan says. These photos are taken from Dan’s detailed post, which is featured today on Edison’s Desk, the blog of the scientists at GE’s Global Research.
Chip off the ole block: Chucky II is seen here at a practice field in Western NJ, around 2003. Chucky II is much bigger than Chucky — and used steel to stiffen the frame. It was built in seven weeks. The design is Roman, from about 2000 years ago, borrowing heavily from Greek siege machines, which tended to be more complex.
Son of Chucky: Here’s a more recent look at Chucky II, which Dan says is “arguably the most powerful torsion catapult ever built.” He says that “in 2007 we threw a 10lb pumpkin over 3,000 feet in competition, but the throw was disqualified because a piece came off the pumpkin about 2,000 feet downrange. We returned the following year and threw 3091 feet, proving it wasn’t a fluke.”
Rise of the machines: In the photo at left, Chucky III is seen at the competition in 2009. This year, now dubbed “C3,” the catapult features new hydraulics and paint.
You can watch the story unfold on the Science Channel and the Discovery Channel. A show about preparing for the event, called “The Road to Punkin Chunkin 2010″, will be broadcast tonight, Wednesday 11/24 on the Science Channel at 10pm and re-broadcast tomorrow, Thanksgiving, at 7p.m.. This second airing will be immediately followed by a 2 hour special, simulcast on both the Discovery and the Science Channels, about the 3 day event itself, which took place on Nov 5-7 in Delaware. The show, called “Punkin Chunkin 2010″, will be hosted by the Mythbusters, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman.
Read Dan’s full blog post in which he explains the catapults in detail — and see a video of them testing it in 2007 — on the GE Global Research blog.
* Read more Global Research stories on GE Reports