It is getting harder and harder to think of an idea which has some sort of scientific principle, is visually exciting, can be done in 10 hr, won't kill the team or production staff, AND hasn't been mentioned at least 3 times already. A quick scan of the 800 or so postings hasn't turned this one up yet, but I may have missed it.

The challenge: Implode a large, sturdy pumpkin. Destroying various gourds has been a staple of Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars, so this is familier territory. Teams may choose to evacuate the pumpkin with a very powerful, bodged together vaccum pump, or place the pumpkin in some sort of pressure chamber and crush it with compressed air/gas.

The winner is which ever team can implode 3 pumpkins the fastest.

If this isn't messy enough, just invert the challenge and explode the pumpkins without the use of gunpowder, etc. Now the teams have to either pressurize a pupkin from the inside, or place it in a large vaccum chamber.

An optional pumpkin pie cookout can be held after the show.

-- Arthur Majoor (a_majoor@hotmail.com), April 09, 2001