They're just smashing pumpkins
Mundelein gets medieval putting Halloween jack-o'-lanterns to bed
MUNDELEIN -- In days of yore, a trebuchet would be used in laying siege to a fortress, catapulting everything from stones to infected corpses into the lap of the enemy.
(Joe Shuman/Special to the News-Sun)
In the modern-day world of "Mythbusters," a trebuchet can be the subject of an adventurous after-school project to help dispose of a different menace: rapidly decomposing post-Halloween pumpkins.
"Hopefully, we can get everyone to help us clean them up," Nora T'Niemi of the Mundelein Park District said with a laugh as one pumpkin after another was launched more than 100 yards from the top of the sled hill Sunday afternoon at Keith Mione Community Park.
That was, eventually, the point of the exercise -- collect Halloween's leftover jack-o'-lanterns and send them to the Prairie Crossing Conservancy in Grayslake to be composted.
But the process was also about the thrill of seeing seasonal projectiles flung through the autumn air, then land with a burst of orange matter. That process began some two months ago, when T'Niemi approached Mundelein High School physics teacher Mike Hickey with a challenge.
"She asked if I'd be interested in providing a pumpkin-throwing device," said Hickey, adding that he and student teacher Mark Michalski jumped in with both feet. "We met on two occasions to design it. We knew the basic features it had to have, and then we threw in our own (ideas) ... Really, it's all about making it stable enough so it will hold the weight."
A classic counter-balance, the trebuchet holds a rack of weights -- up to 400 pounds in this case -- at one end of a lever, with a slingshot at the other. When the weights are raised to a fixed point and then released, the end with the slingshot whips around like the hand of a runaway stopwatch, flinging whatever has been ceremoniously loaded.
"I think it works best with three- or four-pound pumpkins," Hickey said. "As soon as you get up above about 9 pounds, it just kind of lobs it straight up."
Prior to Sunday's public unveiling, the trebuchet had several test runs with Hickey, Michalski and more than a dozen students who volunteered for the effort. Seniors Kristie Leibfritz, Jessica Moehling, Sarah Small and Diane Tangonan relaxed on the peak of the hill before launch time, confident that the gathering crowd of pumpkin owners was in for a show.
"We spent September building it, and then we spent October testing it," said Tangonan, adding that most of the tests took place on the grounds of the high school, but Columbus Day was spent doing a test run on the sled hill.
"So we know it will shoot," Small said. "We just don't know how far."
As it turned out, smaller pumpkins -- usually about the size of a 12-inch softball -- went both high and deep, traveling an estimated 120 yards to the oohs and aahs of about 200 spectators. Applause and laughter greeted pumpkins that exploded in particularly spectacular fashion.
As with any party, the end would only come with the cleanup. How much compost material were organizers hoping to send to Prairie Crossing? "Well," said T'Niemi, "we're hoping for no more than the seven garbage cans we brought."
