What is a punkin chunkin?
Pumpkins are useful in many ways — as a filling for pie, a jack-o’-lantern, and, as it turns out, as a projectile. For 24 years the great pumpkin has been at the center of the World Championship Punkin Chunkin, where “backyard engineers” test the limits of pumpkin physics during a three-day festival in Bridgeville, Delaware [Science Channel]. So far the limits of punkin chunkin stand at 4,438 feet, the world record for hurling these orange gourds through the air without the aid of electricity or explosives. [Science Channel]. Pumpkins rocket into the sky from three different types of launchers, or “chunkers”: catapults, trebuchets and air cannons, a spectacle that attracts upwards o
