Physics and tech engineering students participated in the annual pumpkin drop on Wednesday, October 29. Students designed contraptions to protect their pumpkins when dropped to the ground from a city bucket truck.
Physics teacher Mrs. Jennifer Lewis described the event as “an inquiry into allowing students to explore forces.” The end goal is for students to think about the strengths and flaws in each of their designs and figure out how forces act on those designs. Lewis encourages “thinking outside of the box, taking maybe an idea you see and putting your own spin on it.”
Tech engineering teacher Mr. Mike Foor also involved his students in the pumpkin drop to learn how to construct a solution to a problem. “You’re trying to design something that’s going to absorb all that force when it hits the ground and transfer it elsewhere so the pumpkin survives,” Foor said. The same method is used when designing cars, Foor added.
Two teams, one in physics and one in tech, had a surviving pumpkin. In physics, seniors Grady Wachs and Matthew Shamblen cushioned their pumpkin in a box with lawn trimmings. In tech and engineering, junior Alyssa Gangale and sophomores DJ Howatt, Marisa Mudra, Lucas Mlynarczyk and Indy Benkner had a similar result by using pool noodles and solo cups. Wachs and Shamblen learned to persevere even when others are “roasting your design, saying it’s trash. Because they were saying that to us and we succeeded,” Shamblen said.
The goal of the pumpkin drop is not to “win” though. “It’s more about trying and failing and fixing than it is succeeding right off the bat,” Lewis said.
For the physics class, the pumpkin drop is a smaller project that prepares students for the egg drop which will take place near Thanksgiving. Students will use what they learned about forces during the pumpkin drop to protect their eggs from a collision.
