What do you do when your pumpkin starts to rot? You could throw it in the trash or let it deteriorate outside, but then you'd be missing out on the opportunity to hurl it into a liquified state with a medieval weapon. Every year the World Championship Punkin Chunkin is held in Delaware just after Thanksgiving—the competition lasts three days, includes pumpkin demolition tools like homemade trebuchets, and is broadcast on the Science Channel (video below). And today the NY Times reports that New Yorkers can also take part in this pumpkin pulverization without having to go to Delaware!
Donald Totman of Daisi Hill Farm in Millerton, NY says they're smashing pumpkins to sell them, and every weekend launch about 1,000 pounds of would-be-Jack-o-Lanterns to their certain death. Totman is armed with a trebuchet and an air cannon—he says upon impact the pumpkins “turn into water."
Even closer to home, the New York Hall of Science in Queens will be busting out their 19-foot-tall metal trebuchet to demonstrate the principles of physics during Catapult Month (that's this month—Happy Catapult Month everyone!). On the 30th and 31st, pumpkins will meet those principles of physics, and you can watch (and that Brooklyn pumpkin better watch its back).
