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University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt Returns

Posted by Zonk on Fri May 11, 2007 01:09 PM
from the can't-find-what-you-don't-look-for dept.
It's funny. Laugh. Education
mresolver writes "We've discussed it in previous years, and now the world's largest scavenger hunt at the University of Chicago has returned. The event may be best known for the working breeder reactor students built for the 1999 hunt. This year, some of the 330 list items (PDF) include 3-D (and 4-D) Twister, a hand-built Theremin, a recreation of the Moon landing, the world's largest Newton's Cradle, and hyperbolic crocheting."
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Related Stories

[+] U of Chicago Scavenger Hunt List - 2004 268 comments
nightsweat writes "The list of items and tasks for the 2004 version of the infamous University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt (or scavhunt for short) is up as a PDF. As a veteran of the first hunt in 1985, I'm glad to see the youngsters carrying on the madness. Some of the highlight items - the URLs of the blogs of the judges, five pages of Queer Eye for Doctor Doom, A McDonald's Sad Meal, Mrs Potatohead giving Mr. Potato head, Eudaemonia (300 points!), and a permanent tattoo that says 'Sorry about the syphilis, can we still be cousins?'"
[+] The World's Largest Scavenger Hunt Returns 102 comments
mresolver writes "University of Chicago students have once again emerged from the library after a long winter to participate in the world's largest scavenger hunt. The multiple day event is famous for the working breeder reactor that students managed to build during the 1999 hunt. This year, the official list (PDF) includes a superconductor, working wood refrigerator, hot air balloon made to Montgolfier specifications, one-way funhouse mirror, and a walk-in Kaleidoscope."
[+] Science: Students Build Reactor For Scavenger Hunt 96 comments
MattJ writes "At the end of this NYT story about a scavenger hunt at UofChicago, you discover two physics students got points for building a working nuclear reactor, in a day, from scratch. It's a bit scary how easy it was for them to actually produce plutonium. " Reminds me of some of things we did in Biochem. But the lawyer says I'm not supposed to talk about that.
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  • a recreation of the Moon landing


    We're gonna need a whole lot of Mentos and Diet Coke for that one!

    • hyperbolic crocheting.
      FWIW I knitted a hyperbolic paraboloid for math class in high school.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Yeah. To crochet a hyperbolic plane, just double one stich in every n stitches (the smaller n, the more negative the curvature). It's one of the easiest things to crochet at all. There was actually an article in the Mathematical Intelligencer a while back about it, where the intended audience was people with no crocheting experience at all.

        Klein bottles and projective planes are much more interesting to crochet, and still very much possible. It's even possible to crochet arbitrary Seifert surfaces fairly ea

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ciroknight (601098)
      Oddly enough, #134:

      "Screw the salute--Diet Coke and Mentos jetpack!"

      Killing two birds with one stone.
    • Contestants should refrain from damaging the Tranquility Base site.
    • Boy that brings back some memories. When I was in college, my crotch was the subject of much hyperbole. Oh crocheting... never mind.

  • i knew it (Score:4, Funny)

    by mastershake_phd (1050150) on Friday May 11 2007, @01:19PM (#19087399) Homepage
    a recreation of the Moon landing

    The moon landing was staged at the university of Chicago!

  • The event may be best known for the working breeder reactor students built for the 1999 hunt.
    It's too bad that if they tried that nowadays they'd probably get thrown in Gitmo.

  • A few more highlights and comments: (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    17. The Marx brothers' mirror sketch did not involve a mirror -- why should these?

    27. A Turing machine. Is it OK if it's just equivalent to one?

    45. Sounds like fun. How much money?

    51. Tumbleweed. Believe it or not, they actually do have these in Chicago.

    72. Angel Falls, MN?

    206. Find Waldo in the Loop. Now, are you supposed to abduct him and take him back to show you found him?

    240. Carhenge. I'm sure the photos will look great, but I'm keeping my distance.

    304. "The Anarchist's Cookbook,

  • Road trip rules (Score:4, Funny)

    by 0100010001010011 (652467) on Friday May 11 2007, @01:56PM (#19088045)
    "May not have received no moving violations or convictions or court-ordered supervision."

    So does that mean you have to have a moving violation to drive?

    Maybe my English parser is broken on Friday.

    • There ain't nothin wrong with no double negatives -- they're a legitimate historical part of the language, and some overthinking idiots in the 18th century decided they were illogical. Well guess what? Language is illogical. Compare "b*ll*cks" (=bad/nonsense/rubbish) with "the dog's b*ll*cks" (=the best thing ever).

      HAL.

  • a hand-built Theremin
    Theremins are sufficiently rare that I sure any one they did find would be "hand built". I built one as a kit many years ago, but no longer have it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin [wikipedia.org]
    • They built a breeder reactor one year. After reading the principle behind the Theremin I don't think I'd put it past some students.
      • Of course they can *build* one. Any kid in Junior High could build a Theremin, it's just a bunch of oscillators and mixers. From the rules, it sounded like they had to find one that was already built, by hand. (someone else's) Am I wrong here?
        • The way I read it was "hand built" as in "you can't go buy a kit".

          Given some of the other items on the list, the list looks pretty open to interpretation.

          If they build it by hand... why wouldn't it be 'hand built'. Other comments make it seem like some people make these in their free time, so maybe they just want them to find one that some one built in their free time.
        • The point of the U of C Scavenger Hunt is not to go find things and bring them back. That would be exceedingly boring. The important thing for each item is that the solution be interesting. That means that would be great if you bring back a vintage theremin from 1960, or if you built one yourself. Even better would be to bring in a real theremin being helf by Brian Wilson. The main point of the Hunt is creativity. U of C is not MIT.
          • What does this have to do with MIT?
              • The MIT Mystery Hunt is not similar, it's not even a scavenger hunt - it's much more creative..
                web.mit.edu/puzzle/www
                  • It takes a huge amount of creativity to figure out the solution to any puzzle (there's no instructions for any puzzle)
                    what's so creative about U of C thing, maybe I'd call it minor thinking outside the box..
    • Hey...I have a Theremin right here! Wait...what's this? "Made in Taiwan"....damn! That guy on EBay said he built it by hand! What a rip-off.

      Well, maybe I can help with another one of the items in the scavenger hunt. I've knitted a parabola before and I'm sure that it would be easier to hyperbolic crochet...
    • Theremins are sufficiently rare that I sure any one they did find would be "hand built"

      Well, you may just ask Froogle [google.com]. There, apart from some kits, and this "Hywatt" [instrumentpro.com] thing from a certain "Instrument Pro" company that I had never heard about, the most widely available Theremin comes from Moog [guitarcenter.com], certainly not hand-made.

      • Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin has a theremin in the middle bit. I'm sure you can find a performance on Youtube.

  • Not again (Score:4, Funny)

    by cloudkiller (877302) on Friday May 11 2007, @02:11PM (#19088293) Homepage Journal
    252. While at Carhenge, drive the earth into the sun! [1,000,000,000 points; 2 points for effort]

    Someone better get homeland security on the phone.

  • 81. Genji 2 has shown us that the Oriental Institute lacks an exhibit on one of the famous battles that actually took place in Ancient Japan. Fix that. [29 points]
    The Giant Enemy Crab will be tough to do, but it'll still be possible. But how can they show the real-time weapon change?

  • Info on the reactor (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bromskloss (750445) on Friday May 11 2007, @03:18PM (#19089429)
    It was a bit tricky to find, many pages talking about it were gone, but here it is [archive.org].

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mikael (484)
      I particularly like the comment:

      " Although some judges and fellow Mathews teammates were concerned over the safety of the reactor, Kasper
      said that he and Neill took serious precautions during its construction. "It was all very well-controlled. We
      packed the materials..., built a shed, and assembled it there... We've stopped the reaction. We only detected
      about several thousand atoms of Uranium, so it's not like the source is radioactive by any means anymore."

  • "The Hunt" Documentary (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Phat_Tony (661117) on Friday May 11 2007, @03:45PM (#19089865) Homepage
    There was a documentary [imdb.com] made of the U of C scavenger hunt a few years ago. You can buy it here. [periphrastic.com] Or request that Netflix [netflix.com] or your local library get a copy, so you can check it out.

    * disclaimer- I know the people who made this film. I still liked it.

  • Rubbery (Score:4, Funny)

    by youthoftoday (975074) on Friday May 11 2007, @04:13PM (#19090295) Homepage Journal
    As the PDF was downloading I was saying to myself 'Please be LaTeX, please be LaTeX'.
    For some reason the fact that they did restores my faith in humanity.
  • Number 87:

    Schroedinger's dick in a box [0 or 1 points. Maybe both if you don't open the box]

    Seriously though, its nice to see that universities are still academic, but also just plain fun. Although it's pretty sad that we all get both parts of that joke...
    • $1,000,000 is quite ambiguous, doesn't specify US legal tender...
      Anyone have extra Monopoly sets?
      • $1,000,000 is quite ambiguous, doesn't specify US legal tender...

        I doubt you'd get away with Monopoly money, but it's true it doesn't specify US dollars. Perhaps you could make a road trip to Canadia for their new million dollar coin [foxnews.com]?
      • Well, legal tender in $1,000,000 would be cheapest for Jamaica dollars. About $15,000 USD to have $1,000,000 JMD on hand. If anyone else knows a more favorable dollar comparison, I'd love to hear it.

        • Well, half a cake is quantantively equal to two quarters of a cake, or four eighths, eight sixteenths etc. This doesn't mean that they are physically identical.

          Half a cake can only be in one place. Two quarters of a cake can be in at most two places. Four eighths, up to four.

          Two quarters of a cake cannot be recombined into half a cake: the cut is final and everyone knows this, but for some odd reason we abstract this out of our mathematical teaching models. Which is where the problem you highlight comes i

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