Just because the clock strikes midnight on Halloween doesn't mean that you're done with pumpkins, no way, no how, nope. Nor, dear autumn-obsessed friends, are pumpkins done with you.
You can, of course, still find your steaming pumpkin beverages down at the local coffee shop or fancy coffeehouse. You might drive by a pumpkin patch that's still keeping "open" hours into early November.
And you will, if you happen to be in the right spot in Fullerton on Saturday, Nov. 5, spy gourds sailing through the air as though they had somehow sprouted wings.
Of course pumpkins don't rock wings, but science-loving students possess the ability to build nifty trebuchet-like devices that can hurl squashes high above a patch of grass lined with deeply impressed onlookers.
And those devices shall be erected around the athletic fields at Cal State Fullerton from 10 in the morning to 1 o'clock.
Yes, we are referencing a classic punkin' chunkin' here (or however you wish to spell it, as the event arrives with a few different handles depending upon its location). And we are for sure talking about the big annual team-up between the Discovery Cube Orange County, the George Westrom & Family Foundation, and the CSUF's College of Engineering and Computer Science, the one that doesn't have "chunkin'" in its name but does boast the intriguing word "launch."
It's the Pumpkin Launch, and it is set to again host a bevy of high school and college teams, idea-having groups that will pursue connecting a flying pumpkin with a target via "giant trebuchets and other devices."
Local
Get Los Angeles's latest local news on crime, entertainment, weather, schools, COVID, cost of living and more. Here's your go-to source for today's LA news.
Some "hands-on activities and challenges" will also be a part of the problem-solving, "eureka!"-shouting day of imagining and building. And, yes, food trucks shall stand at the ready, in case all of those pumpkin-launching students, and the pumpkin-admiring onlookers, need some tasty tacos or sandwiches.
If you've only witnessed a chunkin' of punkins on television, here's your chance to see the whole messy, seedy shebang live. And to support the pursuit of science in the process? The cool thing just got even cooler.
