What's Punkin Chunkin?ON THE FIELD An air cannon team shows some American pride.
Pumpkins. Good for carving, making pies, baking seeds and a flurry of other fall favorites. But a catapulting pumpkin competition? Now that's an unusual use for this orange gourd-like squash! For 25 years, the World Championship Punkin Chunkin competition has been launching pumpkins high into the skies above Delaware. Science Channel will be there again this year to catch every far-flingin, high-flyin moment. Punkin Chunkin covers every angle of the intense competition from growing special, aerodynamic pumpkins and determining the perfect pumpkin's mass to the mechanics of the air cannon and the physics of catapults. It may look simple at first. Take a pumpkin, load it up and let 'er rip, right? Wrong! Each machine has to be calibrated to the weight of the pumpkin before launch. One big miscalculation and months of hard work can disappear in a flash. Part awesome science experiment, part genuine Americana, Punkin Chunkin, documents the ingenuity of the biggest, loudest, greatest pumpkin hurling competition in the world. Science Channel will follow select teams as they journey from machine design to testing their equipment to the competition's climactic finale, where every team hopes to reach the one-mile mark — the holy grail of Chunkers everywhere. Since 1986, Sussex County, Delaware has been home to the annual Punkin Chunkin World Championships — a three-day festival where hardcore engineers and backyard tinkerers trailer their gigantic, home built contraptions with one common goal: to launch eight to 10-pound pumpkins as far as mechanically possible. The competition is divided into seven categories defined by the type of machine used — trebuchets, catapults and the mighty air cannons just to name a few. Punkin Chunkin is the only place where you can find massively powerful machines, regular Joes competing against science brainiacs (and winning!), a real scoop on the science behind the chunks and 60-year-old men with long white beards dressed like pumpkins from head to toe! What more could you want on a Thanksgiving night? Let the games begin! CHUNK FURTHER
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