You have been building all kinds of things that are great for wars and for destruction. I have seen the show that built a combine. How about something for kids to take pleasure in - a Merry-go-Round. It could either be man-powered or machine powered. It would have to carry all four members of the team at one time. The test would be to made a machine that goes round and round and up and down - like horses on a merry-go-round. This would require some rather complicated gear ratios and changes in direction - safety would have to be of concern so that no one would be propelled off the machine. All things sat on on the merry-go-round would have to be different which would present a real challenge to the welders. Give it a thought.

-- Dr. L. R. Wadsworth (lwadswor@telusplanet.net), January 30, 2001

Answers

And as posted many times........what would determine the winner?

-- JunkMan (r1ddller@juno.com), January 30, 2001.

The winner could be determined by the number of revolutions that the merry-go- round makes in a given amount of time carrying all four members of the team.

-- Dr. L. R Wadsworth (lwadswor@telusplanet.net), January 30, 2001.

Gee that would be about as exciting as watching the grass grow! The Idea of the show is to get the veiwers to watch, not drive them away.

-- Rick The Rocket (hoodoo2@povn.com), January 30, 2001.

This is an idea that has been repeated several times here, but there seem to be a couple of things that would make it a less-interesting show.

1. I really believe that it would be too difficult to build in 10 hours, especially if it was like a true merry-go-round (horses going up and down, etc.).

2. There are not two obvious ways to build it. We would likely end up with two nearly-identical machines.

3. Turning it into a competition based on revolutions per unit of time or some such would be quite dangerous for the competitors. One of them (the machines, not the competitors) might also fly apart and injure Cathy, which would be totally unacceptable (George and Robert are on their own).

4. These machines would be too large to transport, so the competition would have to be held in the Junkscrapyardheap. The work areas would have to be enlarged, and some accomodation would need to be made for the competition. I'm guess the producers would find this to be too much work for a single episode.

These considerations, especially for safety, would seem to apply to nearly any carnival ride. In short, while it would certainly be kind of fun to build a homemade marry-go-round, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't ride on one, and it probably would be impractical for JYW/SC.

-- Rick Tyler (rick@raf.com), January 30, 2001.