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STEM News

In Picatinny Competition, Kids Build Catapults
To Launch Pumpkins Into The Lake

Pumpkin Slinging Contest 2022 — A crowd watches as a trebuchet, built by the Dover Dunkers from Dover Middle school,
launches a pumpkin into Lake Picatinny during the 5th Pumpkin Sling competition at
Picatinny Arsenal on Friday, October 21, 2022. Five New Jersey schools competed
in the event that is part of Picatinny’s STEM Educational Outreach Program.

Approximately 50 students from five northern New Jersey schools matched engineering wits in a competition to determine who designed the catapult that could launch pumpkins the farthest into Lake Picatinny on Friday, Oct. 21.

Students and their teachers representing Dover Middle School, New Providence High School, Madison High School, Sussex County Technical School, and West Orange High School competed in the event at Picatinny Arsenal in Wharton. The teams met in a parking lot in front of the lake where they positioned various catapult, trebuchet and launcher creations.

Sussex County Technical School students launched a pumpkin 160 meters on their first attempt to take top prize in a battle between the schools.

Samantha Masih, a senior and a member of the engineering team for the Sussex County school, said the design for her team’s trebuchet was based on a model used here by a previous team, but with some adjustments.

“We got second place last time,” said Masih. “We wanted to see if we could make the sling longer, the radius longer, whether it would launch longer.” To accommodate the longer sling the team made their device taller and changed the dimensions of the arm.

The Sussex team had tested a carbon fiber arm, but it broke during the tests. They brought extra metal arms and pivot rods to the contest. “We know the amount of weight we put on is like 800 pounds, so they end up bending,” said Masih.

The amount of energy required to launch pumpkins into the lake was visible with the bent metal and broken components seen during the event. The Sussex team lost a trebuchet arm due to bending, a sling broke during their second throw -- resulting in a generally vertical pumpkin launch -- and a pumpkin burst into pieces upon their third launch.

The New Providence team got their best launch and a third-place 63-meters, even though the bar holding the gym-type weights bent into a U-shape as the trebuchet launched the pumpkin.

“These students embarked on a STEM journey leveraging physics, engineering, carpentry skills and sheer ingenuity to build the pumpkin slings that you see before you,” said Lt. Col. Kevin P. Shilley, Military Deputy U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armament Center and Picatinny Arsenal.

“The most exciting part of engineering is to see what happens when these ideas and efforts meet reality,” said Shilley. “Learn from what works the way you expected it and what does not. They call this experience, or wisdom.”

The three-member middle school team from Dover launched their pumpkin 16.8 meters. “Dover was the only middle school that attended, and they have attended all five events,” said Giulia Grotenhuis, event organizer. “One of my greatest joys is to see Dover Middle School hit the water.”

West Orange High school’s best launch was 23 meters. Madison High School’s 91-meter launch earned second place.

New entrants, New Providence High School, won the safety award for how one of their members verbalized their procedural checklist as the team underwent preparations for launch.

The pumpkin slinging contest was intended to allow participants to use science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in a “fun and competitive way.” By building catapults to sling pumpkins, participants used physics and mathematics skills such as linear kinematics, projectile motion, trigonometry, and engineering physics.

Student designers of advanced pumpkin-launching trebuchets had opportunity to compare notes with the Picatinny scientists and engineers who have developed cannons, used by the U.S. armed forces, which were on display.

The pumpkin slinging competition, now in its fifth year, is part of Picatinny’s STEM Educational Outreach Program. Nearly 200 Picatinny scientists and engineers have volunteered to support STEM education. That support includes more than 1,000 classroom visits, staffing over 100 educational field trips to Picatinny Arsenal’s working laboratories, assisting nearly 800 teachers, and inspiring 50,000 students in over 400 schools.