Perilous Plunge Puts Premium on Pumpkin Preservation

October 22, 2015

ODU students pictured with their pumpkin-catching creation at last year's Pumpkin Drop.

Preserve the pumpkins!

That's the goal Old Dominion University students will adopt when they take to the top of the Batten Arts and Letters Building for their annual Pumpkin Drop.

This year's contest, sponsored by the ODU Society of Physics Students, will take place Thursday, Oct. 29 from noon to 2 p.m. on the North Lawn of BAL, at 43rd St. and Hampton Blvd.

The event is open to anyone.

Students form teams and build "pumpkin catchers" designed to protect their pumpkins from shattering at the end of their nine-story plummet.

Teams will study the effectiveness of different pumpkin-catcher designs intended to harmlessly dissipate the kinetic energy of the plunging pumpkins. Past catchers have included simple buckets of mud to complicated counterweighted creations.

During the event, Society of Physics Students will also demonstrate mechanics experiments.

All participants are encouraged to wear costumes.

Rules of the contest can be found here. Anyone interested in forming a team should contact Heather Hagood or associate professor Stephen Bueltmann.