West Texas A&M hosts annual Pumpkin Chunkin contest
West Texas A&M hosted its annual Pumpkin Chunkin contest Thursday afternoon, pitting student teams’ designs against each other to deliver pumpkins downrange, with an emphasis on accuracy.
The contest, which featured engineering students from WT and high school students from its Pre- University Program (UP), had about 20 teams competing with multiple types of designs for catapults. There are four main types of catapults which include trebuchet, ballista, mangonel and onager. Many students went with the trebuchet, which uses a counterweight mass to propel the gourd but others used a more straightforward design.
Forgoing last year’s choice of targets, teams had to aim at a target of 25 meters, with the center mass of the bullseye scoring 3 points. No team hit a bullseye but two teams came within a meter or so of the mark. Just launching the pumpkin beyond the catapult was a chore for many groups involved. Even in failure to launch, teams had fun with the experience.
Coming out on top of the event was the team Brothers, which included:
Gabriel Abarca, sophomore pre-engineering major from Friona; Javier Mendoza, sophomore pre-engineering major from Dimmitt; Brayden Horton, freshman pre-engineering major from Midland; and Anthony Abarca, sophomore engineering tech major from Friona.
Abarca said his team decided to go with more of a slingshot design to have more control over the path and velocity of the pumpkin.
“We went with this design because with trebuchets, we feel that they have more accuracy issues,” Abarca said. “We wanted something that we could control more physically with greater accuracy. Our design is fully movable so that we can make greater adjustments in less time.”
Dean of College Engineering for WT, Pam Lockwood, spoke about the annual event and its value in giving engineering students a chance to show what they have learned in class and put it into practice.
“This is an opportunity for engineers to design their first contraption to accomplish a task,” Lockwood said. “For these students, this is a chance to do their first design from their classroom learning.
She said the contests were revamped a few years ago, when it was a distance contest, to make it more about accuracy due to safety considerations. Her favored design for the catapults was the bungie design which allowed for more control.
“Most of the things that the students are learning from this event is projectile motion, which is something that they are studying in their classes as one of the first concepts they learn,” Lockwood said.
Coming in second place with the Halloween-themed trebuchet catapult was the team named as Campbell’s soup, which consisted of Colton Mellott, sophomore civil engineering major from Monte Vista, Colorado; Daniel Arnold, sophomore pre-engineering major from Euless; Kay Surjadi, sophomore pre-engineering major from Plano.
Arnold said that while his team did try to make their catapult visually pleasing, there was not an emphasis for style over substance.
“We figured a trebuchet would be the most consistent with being able to get more distance,” Arnold said. “With this method, we got a launch that can reach the target and give us more control. We learned a lot from previous contests and just wanted to put what we learned into action. We tried our best to make our catapult as stable as possible.”
Both top-finishing teams had pumpkin launches, which hit the two-point mark, but Brothers hit the scoring area twice to win.
The team known as Pumpkin π, which came nowhere near target on its gourd launches, still hit a bullseye with the judges for having the best decoration. Members of the team included Felisha Martinez, a senior civil engineering major from Briggs; Russell Rogers, a senior civil engineering major from Amarillo; Johnny Tamayo, a senior pre-engineering major from Pearland; Anastasia Hawkins, a pre-engineering major from Shallowater pursuing a second bachelor’s degree.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: West Texas A&M hosts annual Pumpkin Chunkin contest
