Our ballista works best with smooth round dense punkins. Hard-throwing torsion machines often like flatter punkins like Rumbo, but air cannons like round lumina punkins. The breed of punkin used differs based on the type of machine. Punkins (as we like to call them) must weigh between 8-10 lbs, and breeds that are completely solid (with no hollow core) have been disqualified in the past. Official World Championship Punkin Chunkin (WCPC) rules regulate which are valid breeds. Is pumpkin selection regulated by the judges? Has the Punkin Chunkin led to a breed of small, dense cannonball-like pumpkins?ĮRIC. Pumpkin structural integrity is crucial when you're subjecting them to this kind of acceleration. Until then, we play around with launching apples and snowballs in our backyard. Team Tormentum is actively waiting for a Punkin Chunkin contest in the Northeastern US to be available for us to attend. Is Team Tormentum still in business?ĮRIC. Although since there's a pandemic going on, we weren't actually in the same room. Since Eric works in the same building as me, I was able to ask him some questions. Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pride and pleasure that I bring you the world premier of 'Punkins.'Įric assures me that no pumpkins were harmed in the production of this video (the same cannot be said for his ballista work). Or the closest thing to it that a blog can provide. This paragraph constitutes a dramatic pause. It's a MATLAB Graphics Dancing Pumpkins music video, complete with original music composed by another MathWorker, Luke Stark. Just in time for Halloween 2021, he has created a genre-crossing masterpiece. You might think that’s impressive enough. These are all genuine breeds, lovingly portrayed by MATLAB. But any true aficionado knows there is a wealth of variation in the pumpkin patch. You might think of a computer-generated pumpkin as a generic orange blob with a green tuft of a stem on top. He’s been working on a sophisticated set of pumpkin-rendering tools. Recently, Eric brought his two loves together. You may have seen some of his contributions to the ongoing Mini Hack contest. That means he's the guy who puts the Phong in our lighting models and the handles in our graphics. In addition to his gourd-hurling responsibilities, Eric is also in charge of the MATLAB graphics team. You came here to learn something about MATLAB. I see why people do this.' There's something strangely gratifying about launching a pumpkin into low earth orbit.īut you didn't come here to learn about pumpkin-flinging siege engines (or if you did, this has been an insanely lucky day for you). It's one of those activities that might baffle you right up to the moment when you witness it. This skill, in low demand most of the year, becomes extremely valuable during the Punkin Chunkin, a competition devoted to, well, flinging pumpkins long distances.

It's a heck of a story.įor the past 20 years, Eric has been a member of Team Tormentum, a group that specializes in flinging pumpkins long distances. He does this physically with a ballista and virtually in MATLAB. At the end of this exercise, Eric is happy, but the pumpkin can no longer be described as 'perfectly good.' So we can say that what Eric likes to do with pumpkins is make them move. Example: give him a perfectly good Rumbo pumpkin and he might attach it to a siege engine and fling it a quarter of a mile. That might surprise you when you see what he does to them.

Pumpkin 3d model download