Ryerson Engineering: Discovery Channel - The Alan Nursall Experience

Daily Planet - The Alan Nursall Experience - The Great Halloween Pumpkin Launch

October 29, 2009

"The trebuchet is a medieval instrument of war, designed to fling things at the enemy, things that are distinctly unpleasant when arriving through the air, such rotting bovine corpses and large rocks.

These days, however, our military needs are taken care of by more advanced means of flinging unpleasant things through the air, so the trebuchet can be used for good instead of evil. One such application, which I'm sure sprang to mind immediately, is flinging pumpkins. The problem with flinging pumpkins, however, is that each pumpkin can only get flung once, since the impact with the ground is invariably a very traumatic event for the flying gourd.

So we challenged the best and brightest - a group of Ryerson University engineering students - to design and build capsules that could successfully launch a pumpkin from a trebuchet and return it safely to Earth. Dr. Fil Salustri's students took on the task with gusto!

The only person with more gusto than the students was Frank Whittamore of Whittamore's Farm, the builder and operator of the trebuchet. He loves to fling pumpkins and he wasn't about to let a bunch of upstart kids from the city derail his fun!

So it's Frank and the trebuchet against the Ryerson students and their ingenuity. Caught in the middle? A whole bunch of airborne pumpkins, and one flying pig! Enjoy! And thanks to everyone for taking part!" [http://www.discoverychannel.ca]

Daily Planet [2009]

Category:

Science & Technology

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• RyEng
• Ryerson
• engineering
• engineers
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• Experience
• discovery
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• halloween
• pumpkin
• trebuchet
• catapult
• launch
• flying
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• Whittamore's
• farm
• canada

[ohwowsecretcow]

wtf showers.