Last week, Mrs. Durmis’ class launched pumpkins instead of disposing them.

She came up with the idea in 2011 while she was still teaching a small private school. She creatively found a way to incorporate the timely pumpkins into class by introducing the students to some engineering principles and all the math associated with the projectile motion.

Students were to bring their own materials and could basically use anything to launch the pumpkins. A successful launch meant that a pumpkin that weighed 2-4 pounds be launched five meters, which is about 16.4 feet.

In one class, the group with the most success shared that they had personally used wood, pipe, and duct tape. They were able to launch their pumpkin 25 meters or 82 feet! They mentioned that it was because they were able to find and calculate the right angle to actually launch the pumpkin.

The best overall launch was 28.8 meters or 94.5 feet.