CHARLESTON, W.Va. — School children strained their neck to look into the air and hoped for the best. Silhouetted against a gray Charleston sky two line workers in cherry pickers hoisted an array of contraptions up to the 100 foot mark and on the countdown released their payload. Two dull thuds on the concrete followed by cheering became the obvious sounds of the day.
Kaden Borden of South Charleston Middle School stared up at one of the three entries his school produced.
“We bought a plastic bin and filled it with bubble wrap, pillows, and yarn along with sponges and water bottles,” said Kaden who’d watched his school’s first entry fail.
The contraption dropped from one of the cherry pickers and bounced around, but the precious pumpkin cargo remained intact.
As South Charleston’s entry was let go, alongside dropped another unusual contraption, which featured the normal interior padding, but Breanna Ellis of Stonewall Jackson Middle School in Charleston came up with another plan. She used duct tape to attach playground balls around the exterior of the container.
“I don’t know I just thought of it,” said Ellis when asked where she came up with the idea of using the playground balls as the cushion.
Her idea paid off and worked to perfection as the large container bounced off the concourse of Appalachian Power Park and left the pumpkin tightly bound inside in perfect shape.
“We get into the ideas of force, gravity, padding. We talk about density, how dense the materials are,” said Ellis’ teacher Barbara Ames. “We also researched what type of materials absorbed impact the most.”
Ellis assigned her science students to all produce an independent design. A pre-drop was held at school and from those results the three winning designs were selected, which included Breanna’s bouncy box, to be shown off at Appalachian Power Park.