The World's Largest Scavenger Hunt 201
illuminatedwax writes "Every spring, University of Chicago students attempt to cast off their bookish tendencies and hold the world's largest scavenger hunt. Now, the event has been filmed by the student film group, Fire Escape, as a documentary, and is being sold on DVD and VHS from Periphrastic Films. The film follows the various teams and their effort to procure the off-the-wall 300+ items. For those who haven't heard of the University of Chicago Scav Hunt, its biggest claim to fame is from the 1999 hunt, when
students built a working breeder reactor. Items during the 2002 Scav Hunt featured in the film include "Passports stamped by all three axes of evil", building "terrorist base camps" on the University quads, and students competing in a game show-style contest, featuring a DDR contest, and trivia like "Digits of Pi" and "Taylor Series." The Scav Hunt lists can be found here, and the 2002 list here."
Some interesting items... (Score:5, Funny)
222. A secure Windows Web Server
223. A geek with a girlfriend
224. A slashdot firstpost
Re:Some interesting items... (Score:1)
I see that they arn't too gone to have a bit o' fun with the list.
Re:Some interesting items... (Score:1, Funny)
226. Profit
Oh wait, those are from the venture capital scavenger hunt.
Re:Some interesting items... (Score:2)
I found a more interesting one:
279. A print-out of a Slashdot home-page free of any flamebait MS stories.
Re:NYT link, arghhh! (Score:1)
lol... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:lol... (Score:2, Interesting)
Not that that's bad. It's just instead instead of sitting up drinking until 4 am talking about Red Wings, etc., we'd stay up drinking until 4am talking about if Socrates had a death wish at his trial, and how closely Calvin & Hobbes represented their respective namesakes, 17th century philosphers, John Calvin & Thomas Hobbes.
I should know: I was item #153 (complete with flock of sheep) for the 1993 [uchicago.edu] Hunt. Got us (Snell-Hitchcock [uchicago.edu]) 165 points, the win, & my picture in the Chicago Sun-Times.
(Of course, I was glad my mother couldn't make out what exactly the picture was supposed to be off or what was going on.)
-Bill
You have it wrong (Score:2)
The part about Greektown is referring to the traditionally Greek neighborhood in Chicago (think of it as the Greek equivalent of Chinatown). Sure you may have gone to the U of C but I guess you didn't get around Chicago if you didn't know that. FYI, it's a few blocks on the West Loop in Chicago.
Re:You have it wrong (Score:2)
-R
Re:You have it wrong (Score:2)
-Bill
Re:lol... (Score:2)
Scav Hunt!! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Scav Hunt!! (Score:5, Informative)
Scavhunt has also included successful procurement of such fantastic items as a fully-suited hazmat team, live elephants, weapons-grade uranium (before The War On Terror(tm) started; IIRC it was made from the insides of flourescent light bulbs), and such trivialities as goldfish consumed alive, survivor islands on the quads, etc.
For a campus that prides itself of being bookish, and where Kant and Freud are a discussion topic at every party, scavhunt is a chance to get out in the bitter cold of Chicago and be, well, flamboyantly bookish :-)
Re:Scav Hunt!! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Scav Hunt!! (Score:2, Funny)
1001 Excuses for a Lousy GPA is perfect for job interviews, college and grad school applications, and report-card chats with the parents. Order yours TODAY!
sounds like... (Score:1)
You'd think UC students would be too busy to play DDR, or is that hope? It seems no campus is safe from this geeky scourge.
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
It took me a second too. I guess I'm just too old, but to me DDR still means the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, i.e., Communist East Germany.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's old-line Communist terminology. They consider(ed) themselves "democratic" because Communism is a "dictatorship of the proletariat".
The tip-off is the formula "Democratic Republic", sometimes prefixed with "Peoples": "Peoples Democratic Republic of [Region, Language Group, State Name]. This is a standard Communist namiong convention. Where it originated, I'm not sure.
It's meant also, I think, to pointedly imply that they're the "opposite" of "fascists", another term with a lot of baggage attached. Communists (Soviets and their fellow travellers worldwide, especially Comintern) used "Fascist" as a broad brush with which to stain any rightist opponents, from actual Fascists (Nazis, Falangists, etc.) to moderates.
Communist terminology can be fascinating. Words and phrases acquired specific connotations, and so indicated to Communist Party members what their opinion should be, without the embarrasement of having to inquire what the current Party line was. Examples include "[rootless] cosmopolitan", a code-word for "Jewish", "social-fascist" for a moderate leftist, "internationalism" for doing what the Sovets wanted, the self-explanatory "enemy of the people", and the Chinese, not Soviet, but always fun "running dog".
See http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/insults.html#rootles
Terminology used by Communists also tended to move in lock-step, because Communist parties worldwide in the twentieth century tended to be regimented and tighly controlled, ultimately by Comintern and the USSR.
This was espcially important in the 1930s through '50s, as Soviet (and thus worldwide Communist) policy went through dizzyingly swift changes over the course of Stalin's purges, the Hitler-Stalin pact, Hitler's invasion of Russia, and then the Cold War.
A good (and suprising, to me) example of the swift policy changes is evident on the Pete Seeger's CD "Pioneer of Folk". The CD, released in 1999, is a compilation of Seeger's songs of the early 1940s, and opens with "Round And Round Hitler's Grave", in which the singer strongly advocates fighting Germany. But halfway through the CD are the songs "Washington Breakdown", and "C for Conscription" in which Seeger roundly criticizes Franklin Roosevelt for wanting to engage the US in the European war. Sandwiched in between these two songs is "Dear Mr. President", in which Seeger reads an open letter to Rooselvelt, acknowledging to past differences, enumerating a number of progressive issues Seeger feels need addressing, but asserting that Hitler won't solve anybody's problems. In the meantime, of course, Hitler had abrogated his pact with Stalin and invaded Russia, and Communist policy had reversed itself.
Congo Démocratic (Score:2)
Glancing over, I thought that you were referring to the Democratic Republic of Congo [www.nic.cd], formerly Zaire.
This 'Democratic' is not from Communism, just some wicked sense of humor.
Yes, I'm on topic.
Code-words vs. history. (Score:2)
Much as members of the western left wing do, even today.
It's particularly ludicrous given that the real NAZIs were self-proclaimed "national socialists". (But it's normal, since the worst fights are typically between different sects of the same ideology.)
Note that "national socialism" wasn't a propaganda distortion like "democratic republic" (which itself would be redundant). Look into the origins of NAZIism and you'll find something eerily similar to the new-age left, right down to natural foods/health fads/vegitarianism, consensus decision-making, green-style environmentalism, animal rights, mysticism (including "crystals"), and so on.
These weren't just extraneous factors, either, but led, by easy steps, to some of the well-known pathologies of the NAZIs. For instance:
Consensus politics (decision-making by near-unanimous consent of the group) led to dictatorship:
The group doesn't do anything as a group except when everybody is onboard. This leads to paralysis if anybody disagrees. So social pressure mechanisms are developed to encourage individuals to consent to, or even support, group activities perceived as popular despite personal reservations.
Once mechanisms to force consensus are in place, a well-perceived and glib "leader" can get his whole group to actively engage in (or avoid) anything he wants, by describing it as good, right, and popular, (or bad/wrong/unpopular) and refusing to consent to any other choice.
(Note that, unlike the strident demagogue of WW II Allied propaganda films, Hitler was perceived, in pre-war Germany, as quite the popular cuddly-bear. As a result, as with Clinton, his followers were willing to ignore, or disbelieve claims of, even blatant misbehavior in either his public actions and policies or persoanl life.)
Add control of the media or support from its decision-makers: Now contrasting views aren't heard (or are smeared when they can't be completely suppressed). This strengthens the perception of consensus - especially among the lawmakers (who are largely cut off from their actual constituents and tend to give excessive weight toe news stories).
Thus the popular, glib, "leader" ends up completely running the show. Once in charge he consolidates by changing the institutions so they answer directly to him and actively suppress his opposition.
Animal rights lead to medical experiments on humans in death camps:
First: Animal research is suppressed.
Second: Medical research is done on retarded humans. The taboo is broken and a precedent established that "subhuman" people are less important that animals and fair game for medical research.
Third: Various outgroups - typically those with a cohesive culture of their own that insulates them from consensus-forcing - are defined as "subhuman". Examples: Homosexuals, Pagans, Labor-unionists, Gypsies, Jews, Communists (and other socialists with a different agenda).
Fourth: The "subhuman" "problems" are excluded from society and their opinions suppressed. Progressively more draconian measures are applied to "solve" the "problem" of their presence.
Fifth: Medical research is done on these allegedly "subhuman" out-group members.
And so on.
For a month of sleepless nights try reading _The Occult Roots of NAZIism_ and _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_ in rapid succession. B-(
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
I thoght the California Condor... (Score:1)
Re:I thoght the California Condor... (Score:1)
Re:I thoght the California Condor... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I thoght the California Condor... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I thoght the California Condor... (Score:1)
-(())
What do you win? (Score:5, Interesting)
11. Prizes. Prizes are money. And a trophy, apparently.
So I wonder how much money?Re:What do you win? (Score:5, Informative)
I was involved in the making of the Periphrastic film 'The Hunt' as a camera man and assistant. I must say it was the most fun I've had outside competition in the Hunt itself.
-R
Re:What do you win? (Score:3)
Not so, my friend! Dare you slander the mighty F.I.S.T.* so? We took fourth place, which came with an (I think, payout still pending AFAIK) $150 prize. Whatever it was, we got together after the film screening and decided that the prize money came out to about half of our total budget. Goes to show what real dumpster-diving legwork can get you.
*F.I.S.T. = The Lush Puppies Mk. II: Federation of Independent Scavhunt Teams. Basically we decided that the little five-person teams that never stood a chance against the big dorms were being oppressed, so rather than be Borged by the big guys, we banded together to form a team of our own. I think our best moment (sadly not caught on the film) was after judging and cleanup finished, some of the FIST headed out behind Ida Noyes to dumpster dive the other teams' scraps for use next year.
How to join this? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:How to join this? (Score:3, Informative)
Can I too? (Score:2)
Re:Can I too? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How to join this? (Score:2)
If you live in a dorm, your choice of team will probably be quite clear; look for signs going up in late spring as to meeting places for planning powwows and the like.
If you want to have more fun, and avoid the regimentation of the big dorms, check out the Federation of Independent Scavhunt Teams (F.I.S.T. for really short, our full name is currently running towards a paragraph.) Our philosophy is, let's have major fun, as cheaply as possible, and devote ourselves religiously to what we consider one of the greatest games ever invented for four days. We're looking to start recruiting new talent sometime shortly after winter break, so keep your eyes open.
We're also probably the most geographically diverse team: all over campus, of course, but we've even got some hardcore players who drive in from other states.
Scary (Score:2, Funny)
yea yeah, two different hunts i know, but still!
Re:Scary (Score:5, Informative)
The people involved were physics majors, working in jobs with access to nuclear material.
Re:Scary (Score:2)
Re:Scary (Score:2, Funny)
Not a sustained chain-reaction? (Score:2)
Their original material was thorium, from the inside of some old vacuum tubes (although their first plan involved americium from ordinary hardware-store smoke detectors).
I take it the "breeder reactor" was a "reactor" in terms of producing a slow-but-nontrivial nuclear reaction, perhaps a series of decaying chains when excited by ambient neutrons, rather than the usual meaning of "producing a long-term self-sustaining chain reaction"
Axis of Evil Passport Stamps (Score:5, Funny)
That really doesn't sound that tough. How difficult is it to fly to...
- One) [riaa.com]
- Two) [mpaa.org]
- Three) [microsoft.com]
Oh, wait. They must be referencing the President's State of the Union address. My bad...1330 Connecticut Avenue N.W., Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20036
15503 Ventura Blvd.
Encino, California 91436
and
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
Reactor (Score:4, Insightful)
According to the article, they build a "working nuclear reactor", an fairly easy task if you know how, not a "working breeder reactor", a very complicated task requiring multi-million dollar processing plants and weapons grade plutonium.
Re:Reactor (Score:2)
Seems to me that the level of difficulty is about the same.
Re:Reactor (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Reactor (Score:5, Funny)
I already got in trouble for the coffee mug hotplate.
Re:Reactor (Score:3, Informative)
breeder reactors aren't *that* hard to build... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:breeder reactors aren't *that* hard to build... (Score:1)
This is not the same as building a breeder reactor.
Re:breeder reactors aren't *that* hard to build... (Score:2)
Re:Reactor (Score:1)
Re:Reactor (Score:2, Informative)
Students Build Reactor For Scavenger Hunt [slashdot.org]
Re:Reactor (Score:1)
This is pure bullshit. I was a member of the team which built the reactor. First off, the team was the Mathews House Team; we were not part of the BJ team. Second, the resident masters at the time were a classics professor (Chris Faerone) & his wife (Susan). They had no connections at all with the physics department. Nor did the resident heads in Mathews House; Kathy Christofferson taught in Little Red School House. Her husband is a carpenter.
Fred & Justin got the idea for their reactor design while guzzling coffee in the dining hall Friday morning, spent the day gathering materials, and assembled it in the wee hours of Saturday. They did this with no help from anyone. Most of the materials they used they found in various corners of their double.
Re:Reactor (Score:2)
Also, at this year's event there were a total of almost 10 past head judges and head judges emeritus. Footage of them reminiscing is about as close to a 'History of ScavHunt' text as we're going to get.
-R
Ironically... (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia, breeder reactor builds YOU!
Re:Reactor (Score:5, Informative)
The fact is, a breeder reactor is just anything that is making plutonium, at least as far as the judges were concerned. So they made plutonium, by irradiating thorium from lantern mantles with a source they "borrowed" from the student labs. The tricky part was convincing the physics department to lend them a $20K proportional counter so they could detect the relaxation photons and thus prove plutonium production. After 36 hours of running they had a few hundred events that we figured corresponded to a total yield of 100K atoms or so.
Yes, purification would have been harder. No, we're not actually sure what eventually happened to the reactor.
Re:Reactor (Score:2)
A breeder reactor produces plutonium. That's all that's required.
A commercial breeder reactor fissions U-235, just like ordinary PWRs. But surrounding the core is a blanket of non-chain-reaction-sustaining U-238. The U-238 captures the thermal neutrons coming from the U-235 fission reaction, and transmutes to Pu-239, which is also usable as fission fuel.
Royko's Socks (Score:5, Informative)
"So, Mike, now that you're at the Tribune have you changed anything?"
"Only my socks."
The year they ran this commercial we put his socks on the list, figuring it was a good gag for one year. Royko, however, was really mean to the first group to ask him for his socks and printed a column berating the Scavenger Hunt and the U of C.
That's all it took. Pretty much until he died, Mike Royko's socks were on the list, guaranteeing he'd be bothered by geeks every year.
Re:Royko's Socks (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Royko's Socks (Score:2)
What's with all the Chenguin stuff? (Score:2)
Chenguin site [chenguin.com]
Re:What's with all the Chenguin stuff? (Score:2)
Recent Theme Songs:
1998 Weather Girls, "It's Raining Men"
1999 Vengaboys, "We Like to Party"
2000 Positive K, "I Gotta Man"
2001 The Charlie Daniels Band, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"
2002 Andrew W.K., "Party Hard"
"students built a working breeder reactor" (Score:5, Funny)
150. a rubber duck
151. a watermellon
152. a hommemade nuclear reactor
153. a sample of the china syndrome in progress
154. george bush
Re:"students built a working breeder reactor" (Score:1)
How do you play 'Pop Goes the Weasel' (Score:1)
Casting off their bookish tendencies? (Score:2)
haha dont try to hard (Score:1, Funny)
I'm a veteran (Score:5, Informative)
Examples:
The above-mentioned breeder reactor. A bunch of advanced physics students cobbled, jury-rigged, and "borrowed" the necessary components. It was of the type used to make medical radio-isotopes, and therefore didn't receive full points, but it was real and scary as hell. The builders were known for wanting to build their own high-energy weapons for personal use.
"Fisher-Price Baby's First Flamethrower", a device that had to appeal to children and be operable by a three-year old. I'm quite proud of my work on that. Somewhere, we have the photos of that thing shooting out gouts of flame like a scene from a WW2 movie.
Sharlene, our "Chewing Gum Cannon". A device to launch a kilo of chewed gum. Points for distance and shortest time to launch. We used shells and produced a mortar with a range of 75 yards, easy.
A simulated air strike on Slobodan Milosevic. Involved more fireworks going off at one time than I ever want to see again. I have adrenalin-imprinted memories of running very fast in the opposite direction from the initial blast crater, roman candles scorching the air as they passed my head. The cops showed up and laughed until they had tears streaming down their faces.
If you're ever in Chicago on Mother's Day(the Day of Judgment every year), head down to the University to see what's been built/found/destroyed.
Re:I'm a veteran (Score:5, Informative)
The above-mentioned breeder reactor. A bunch of advanced physics students cobbled, jury-rigged, and "borrowed" the necessary components.
This article brings back such lovely memories... I lived in Mathews House when Fred & Justin built their reactor. I've got a photo somewhere of the two of them, standing in front of the shed which housed the reactor, dressed in yellow radiation suits, drinking cheap champagne & Baily's, smoking cigarettes, and grinning like maniacs.
The builders were known for wanting to build their own high-energy weapons for personal use.
wanting to build? Fred & Justin had a lab on the 3rd floor of Kirsten; they used to spend nights in there drinking, smoking cigarettes, and building low-budget lasers, plasma cannons, and other implements of destruction. It's amazing what you can do with a 20,000 Volt power supply, a centiFarad capacitor, and your own custom pulse-forming network.
Re:I'm a veteran (Score:4, Informative)
And oddly enough, the physics dept. basically sealed off the 3rd floor "student lab" after they left. By the time I managed to get back in there, it had been stripped bare and was going to be used for teaching space. Of course, one of them apparently left bits of their stuff as "presents" hidden around the Research Institute. Took me two years, but I eventually found the guts of the pulse forming network (I think) stashed in the sub-basement of the Accelerator building next to some discarded-crated-and-encased-in-fiberglass NASA hardware.
Never did find much of great use, though. On the other hand, claiming to have some leftover Fred TechTM on hand is still a good way to scare a few points out of the judges. A schematic for the plasma cannon was all it took to get partial credit for the "Deface the surface of the moon" item a couple of years ago.
Go team go (Score:1)
Re:Go team go (Score:2)
'course, in my day they were gender separated. I had the job of making people sign the "Who's banging whom" book between the two dorms after 10:00pm.
Work-study forever!
sometimes you learn things (Score:1)
NY Times Article Text (Score:3, Informative)
By Andrew Bluth
''People think of the University of Chicago and they think the students are weird,'' says Tom Howe, a junior from Atlanta. Having taken off his chicken suit, he is wearing a cardboard crown from a Burger King Kid's Meal. ''We want to show that intellectual doesn't necessarily mean stuffy.''
It is this philosophy -- that Chicago students can have fun if they really put their minds to it -- that gave birth to the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, a yearly celebration of looniness at a campus far better known for its Nobel laureates.
Putting aside term papers for a long weekend, hundreds of undergraduates in teams representing dormitories and student organizations range around the campus -- and, this year, the North American continent -- in search of items that will never be found in a course catalogue. The grand prize is $500, but the goal, says Mr. Howe, is loftier: ''to make the participants maximize their intellectual creativity.''
These were among the 339 items on the list for this year's scavenger hunt, released at the stroke of midnight on May 6:
No. 123: A computer suffering a year 2000 problem.
No. 262: Five Mensa membership cards.
No. 167: A 15-foot-tall monument to Grimace, the McDonald's Happy Meal character.
No. 40: A tenured professor willing to recite profane lyrics from a gangsta rap song.
Each team works from an identical list; items are assigned points, based on difficulty, and the team with the most points by Sunday afternoon is the winner. The wording of certain clues often suggests a trip to a far-flung destination -- having a team member photographed with an Ontario police officer, for instance.
Teams are often elaborately organized, with ''page masters'' assigned to each page of the list and at least one person operating a computer long after midnight in search of Web sites that will lead the team to cubic zirconia (20 points) or Chicago Bulls season tickets (15 points) or an autographed photograph of the Food Network star Jacqui Malouf (30 points).
''One of the items on the list was the 'street value of Mount Everest,' '' said Sam Hunt, a freshman competing for his dorm, Shoreland Hall. ''So we posted it on Ebay, and made it look pretty, with a nice picture of the mountain and everything. The bidding got up to $180 before we got kicked off the site.''
The Shoreland team is run out of sixth-floor dormitory room of its captain, Ryan Miller. By the end of the weekend, Thai food containers litter the floor and at least three trash cans are overflowing with empty soda cans. The members have slept little if at all, and the room is a nest of cables that wire no fewer than six personal computers.
When the phone rings, it is answered with a curt ''Command central'' and calls are kept short so that the line can be free for a check-in from the road-trip group, probably somewhere in Canada.
''From what we can gather, the road-trip team is doing really well,'' Mr. Miller says. ''Except last time they checked in, they sounded drunk.''
Other items on this year's list included building a nuclear reactor from scratch (one team was actually successful -- this is the University of Chicago, after all), an edible iMac computer and a ticket to a local theater for a certain movie opening May 19. (To these students, the date needs no further explanation.)
No one is really sure how or when the scavenger hunt began, but they do know it is a welcome break from economics exams and Shakespeare papers -- a way to demonstrate, in Mr. Howe's words, that ''we actually can have fun on this campus.''
And how do you say fun on a college campus better than a keg toss? As part of the Scavolympics, a string of a dozen events before the final judging that teams compete for points in, all 13 teams came together to recreate a battle of the Civil War, to demonstrate a fight between Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth, and, yes, to toss a keg.
Competing for his dorm, Hitchcock-Snell, 23-year-old Niyi Omojola, after minutes earlier winning the competition that called for contestants to eat an entire bottle of squeeze cheese, won the keg toss. While others had grabbed the kegs with two hands, taken a few steps and heaved, he held it with one hand, arm extended, and spun around like a discus thrower, propelling the keg beyond the other teams' markers.
''I was trying to get some torque,'' said Mr. Omojola, a junior. ''If you can direct that torque in a straight line, you can throw it pretty far. People were trying to muscle it, and that's not going to work.''
And if you can't say fun at the U. of C., with a little torque and a keg toss, certainly you can with a nuclear reactor.
Two physics majors, Justin Kasper and Fred Niell, gathered up some spare junk from their physics labs and dorm rooms and built a plutonium-producing reactor.
''It's kind of scary how easy it was to do,'' said Mr. Niell, assuring onlookers that there was only a trace of plutonium -- nothing harmful. ''It only took us about a day to build it. We've been thinking about it for a few days and we gathered the parts, and last night we assembled it. In Justin's room -- he lost the coin toss.''
Re:NY Times Article Text (Score:2)
Try the B-school. Anyplace a prof would teach in a tux on his wedding day would be easy pickings for gansta rap.
Its crap like this... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Its crap like this... (Score:4, Insightful)
A writer? (Score:2)
Re:Its crap like this... (Score:2)
"My cat's breath smells like cat food."
Re:Its crap like this... (Score:3, Insightful)
How in the world can you regard this as a bad thing? Hell, I'll pay more to let my children go to a college that has this sort of event.
These are the jokes folks (Score:2)
Re:Its crap like this... (Score:2)
Congress at Work (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, no senators, but...
This item can be found in the Congressional Record (available at http://thomas.loc.gov). Search for "scavenger hunt" and "University of Chicago"
Re:Congress at Work (Score:2, Insightful)
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/r107query.html
Sear
Scavenger Hunt University of Chicago
and then click on the first thing it returns (" DELETIONS OF SPONSERS..."). Then click Printer Friendly Display and search for Chicago...
More on the reactor (Score:3, Informative)
Response from the creator of the reactor (Score:5, Interesting)
Alright, I just want to set a couple things straight, so here are some
responses to oft heard comments the last few days:
1. "I assume they used U-238 to get to Pu-239..." we did not start
with any uranium or plutonium, that would have ruined the fun, and the
point was to make fissionable materials. Our starting material was
thorium, which can be found at any hardware store. we happened to have
some in our dorm room... The final products were Uranium 233 and
Plutonium 238. I'm not going to spoon feed the decay chains to anyone,
you can figure it out yourself if you really need to.
2. "You endangered the life of my son!" We created a neutron source
using some shit we pulled out of a trash can. This source was safer and
less radioactive than the radioisotope Americium 241 found in the smoke
detector in each of your rooms.
3. "Someone said your roommate lost his job because he built a nuclear
reactor" Neither I nor my rommmate have lost our jobs since doing this.
4. "I hear you paid another group to steal Plutonium for you" We did
not steal Uranium or Plutonium from anywhere. Nor did we have anyone
else steal some for us.
5. "but to qualify as a true breeder, doesn't the reaction have to be
self-sustaining?" No. A breeder reactor just means taking advantage of
all those tasty neutrons flying off from whatever source you have, be it
a sustained fission reaction or a naturally radioactive source. The
best neutron source on campus would be the Physics Dept's neutron
howitzer. But since the howitzer produces neutrons from the decay of
Plutonium, you have to agree it would be silly to use it to try and make
plutonium.
6. "(I'll be really impressed if the two come up with a micro-fusion
reactor.)" We'd fly back next year just for that one...
- Juniper Tasks
Just some clarification for the readers who've forgotten their nuclear
physics:
U-235 is the fissionable used in the Hiroshima bomb and Pu-239
in the Nagasaki bomb. U-238 is used in fast breeder reactors
to make weapons grade Pu-239. (U-238 is also used in fission-fusion-fission
bombs, so technically it is fissionable with a net gain of energy
but you need really fast neutrons).
Thorium was to have been used in slow breeder reactor technology which
turns out U-233 as its fissionable. (Is Pu-238 fissionable at low neutron
energies with a net gain? The even Z makes me think not...)
I thought you had started with depleted uranium to make a fast breeder;
didn't know the thorium isotope available from hardware stores was the
one used in slow breeders.
Well, with a small sample of thorium and a neutron source, you can make
the U-233. But with a fully functioning breeder don't you need some of the
U-233 created to fission and transform the rest of the thorium without
running away and slagging the reactor or damping out so you never
end up with more thorium than whatever's directly exposed to your
neutron source? I suppose the nuclear engineering definition of a
breeder has to be more pragmatic.
Fred and Justin didn't begin with any uranium.
(Uranium, after all, ain't a commonly available thing.) They began with some
thorium and an alpha source, which they just happened to have lying
around. They used the alpha source to make a neutron source, and bombarded
the thorium. This induced a chain of reactions, the final products of
which were fissionable uranium and plutonium.
But the Road Trip! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But the Road Trip! (Score:2)
Being a "starving" graduate student myself, I never understood where students get the money do to things like 4-day road trips and the rest of the zany things that this hunt requires. Must have something to do with old money at UofC. Mind you, I also can't imagine living in the opulant frat houses as-seen-on-TV. Perhaps there really is something to the cost-of-living divide between Canada and the US. I guess I better increase my minimum bribe amount for the next course I TA...
Re:But the Road Trip! (Score:2)
We were sure there was somethign "special" about the gravel that would identify it. Nope. Just rocks.
Havenger Scunt (Score:3, Funny)
So the University banned Scavenger Hunts.
Now we have Havenger Scunts (take that, laywers!), and every year has a new theme. The year I remember best was the 70s blaxpliotation theme. My shirt "Funky Scunt, 99'" gets a lot of double-takes if you read it quickly.
Two things please.... (Score:4, Funny)
Second: Completely impossible, unless you are me! Frankenchrist originally came with a painting called 'Penis Landscape' by H.R. Giger (you all know Him) that was one of the first PMRC cases that was pulled from production (Which I purchased when I was 12, so I could have won 53 points!). Nice Punk Rock Pop Quiz (please say point number one out loud for me). Thank you.
Re:Two things please.... (Score:2)
this [loper.org] (ironically to be printed on sept. 11th, it eventually became this [amazon.com][note burning manhatten, basically the same thing, just a bit more subtle and this time, much more direct]).
Re:Moacir, Moacir, we know your name. (Score:2, Informative)
-R
Re:Moacir, Moacir, we know your name. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Reality TV? (Score:1)
Re:Monumental waste... (Score:2)
I believe that you have nicely put your finger on the whole purpose of the enterprise. It isn't even remotely productive. The point is to pour energy into looking at everything from outside the box. And have fun.
Re:Monumental waste... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Monumental waste... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, since the U of C has little chance of getting into a major bowl game or the final four, they've had to create their own way to waste monumental amounts of time energy, energy and resources.