At the downtown Rapid City Pumpkin Festival, the leaves may be falling, but the pumpkins are flying.
One of the benefits of sharing a community with an elite engineering school like South Dakota Mines is the chance to see applied physics. This weekend, that took the form of a pumpkin chunkin’ contest with full-sized trebuchets.
Clubs from across campus, and nearby Douglas High School, built trebuchets by hand and are ready to fire. For those unfamiliar, a trebuchet is a type of siege weapon used in the Middle Ages. It’s sort of like a catapult, but it relies entirely on gravity.
Clubs like Rocker Robotics, Steel Bridge, and Mines racing team Baja-SAE are competing for prizes in front of hundreds of local families…