Launching the unwanted

The bowling ball arced high, hooked right and hit hard before bouncing off down the tracks toward the old locomotive.

The watermelon took more of a straight-line route before splattering in pieces on the ground just to the right of the rails.

The bagged goods, flour and kitty litter and the like, didn’t fare so well but made for quite the show. The flour was especially memorable, dusting the camera-toting crowd as a cloud of fine white powder made its way earthward.

The collection of everyday items became temporary projectiles yesterday at the Science Museum of Virginia’s first “You Bring It. We Fling It.“ event, with launchings on the hour from noon to 4 p.m.

To the delight of hundreds, Col. Grigg Mullen of Virginia Military Institute was in town with his trebuchet, a reproduction of a medieval-style weapon. He was set up on the tracks behind the museum at 2500 W. Broad St.

A leather sling attached to a 12-foot arm, powered by a 1-ton counterweight, was used to send the items skyward. Mullen was game for most objects. The tosses were complimentary, included with the regular price of admission.

“You won’t believe what happened to my watermelon,“ 10-year-old James Davis exclaimed as he came running up the tracks toward his father, Brian.

Moments before, James’ watermelon, a 7-pounder, splattered on impact a couple hundred feet away from its launch. James and a dozen or so other kids went racing off, inspected the damage and came racing back with their reports of the carnage.

The Davises, mother Yong included, made the 2½-hour drive from Altavista just for the fling.

“Oh it’s worth it,“ Brian Davis said as James ran off to join a line of kids who were helping Mullen pull a long rope that served as the machine’s trigger.

A couple of flings after James’ watermelon, Greg Koss stood with a smile on his face and watched a failed experiment come to a fitting end.

An electrical technician at the museum, he offered a footlong toy car that was supposed to be part of an exhibit near the museum’s Imax theater.

“We never got it working,“ he said. “I’m here to take out my frustration. Just watching it fall apart is what I want to see.“

The car didn’t make it far, but the hundred or so feet it covered in the air topped anything it ever did on the ground, Koss said.

The car was one of the stranger items of the day, but any hopes for the really bizarre were dashed by Mullen.

Since helping a freshman engineering class make the machine in 1998, he said he’d never launched anything particularly odd “because I wouldn’t load it.“

“It’s mostly water balloons and watermelons,“ he said. “I prefer something that shatters on impact. It was originally designed as a weapon, and nothing has changed.“

For Neil and Marie Hawley, the drive from Fredericksburg was a way to get their three school-age boys out of the house after a long holiday break. Their 20-pound bag of kitty litter exploded in the air, but the boys didn’t seem to mind missing the joy of a good impact.

Alex, 12; Garrett, 10; and Hunter, 6; were all smiles anyway, thinking of other things they could launch if given another chance.

“A soccer ball full of sand,“ said Garrett.

“They would have put their little brother or the dog in it,“ Marie said. “We didn’t think that would have been a good idea.“
Contact Zachary Reid at (804) 775-8179 or .