November 28, 2008

Pumpkins Can Fly

Science Channel investigates people with far too much time on their hands.

What To Watch: Punkin Chunkin, Nov 28, 4pm, Science Channel

With a turkey induced hangover (in reality tryptophan probably is not the reason you're dogging it after Thanksgiving, it's everything else you consumed along with the turkey, but we digress) most of you have little better to do than watch a group of people gathered in Sussex County, Delaware. Their objective is to see who can build a machine that will hurl pumpkins. The team whose contraption flings the orange object the longest, wins. The record is some 4,400 feet, not quite a mile.

Surely ye jest. We jest not.

The people involved in this pursuit are semi-serious about chunkin punkins (the spelling is correct these punkin chunkers insist). In fact, there are seven categories in the contest, depending upon what type of hurling device is used: motorized, centrifugal spinners and air cannons. Fortunately Science landed comedian Brad Sherwood, of Whose Line Is It Anyway, to host the special. He does so with appropriate hilarity and more than a dollop of incredulity. (Can you imagine Sherwood's agent telling him that he's found him a gig to host a special about people who compete to hurl a pumpkin the longest? Is that a career ender or what? )

But this is Science Channel, so we get color commentary about the proceedings from Dr Frank Wilczek, the 2004 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, who informs us that tossing vegetables is rooted in science. Oh, sure, go ruin it with a bunch of formulae and equations that factor in wind speed, pitch and the hurler's elevation in addition to the pumpkin's mass, shape, size and stiffness (don't ask). Fortunately Sherwood never lets the show devolve into a physics class and has a terrific way of getting his sidekick to demonstrate the physics principles involved.

Why, you might ask, are we making such a big deal about a show about pumpkin launching? Full Disclosure: Science Channel sent your reviewer a delicious pumpkin pie earlier this week to promote the show. Fortunately it was delivered in a conventional manner, not thrown.