Future engineers hone skills with pumpkin catapult

October 30, 2007 (WLS) -- Pumpkins! We carve them, make pies from them, even chew their seeds. Today, at the Illinois Institute of Technology, they launched them.

Launching pumpkins, as it turns out, is purely academic. All you need are a bunch of Illinois Institute of Technology students and a challenge: build a machine that somehow blasts pumpkins into not too distant space.

"I think we'll be able to go a good 50 to 60 feet. I think our top goal is about a hundred feet," said Roman Kofman, IIT pumpkin launcher.

The 19 different teams were each given $300 to build their contraptions. No electricity or explosives allowed, just ingenuity and lots of work.

"It was pretty much every Saturday for the last month and a half we've been spending on it. WHAT DID THIS DO TO YOUR GRADES? I'll let you know after mid terms," said Kevin O'Leary, IIT pumpkin launcher.

The brand new president of IIT, John Anderson, was part of a team. He was just inaugurated today.

"DO YOU KNOW AS THE NEW PRESIDENT WHAT YOUR JOB IS TODAY? What my job is here? RIGHT HERE. Right here? PUMPKIN CATCHER. I can do that. I can catch it," said Anderson.

Just in case you're wondering, the world's record for pumpkin chucking is 4,434 feet. That's like three quarters of mile, but that's with air compressor pumpkin canons. These are much simpler machines.

They are sort of medieval wood and weights devices, but still they did some good launching. A new record was set at 234 feet.

"DID THEY TELL YOU WHAT YOUR SECOND JOB IS ON YOUR FIRST DAY AS PRESIDENT? My second job? It's to pick up the pumpkin pieces," said Anderson.

Pumpkin launching 101 at IIT. Now this is an interesting physics class.

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