University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt Returns

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."

Hand Built Theremin - Is there any other kind?

[Maximum Prophet]

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]

Re: a recreation of the Moon landing

[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 easily.

Info on the reactor

[Bromskloss]

It was a bit tricky to find, many pages talking about it were gone, but here it is [archive.org].

Re:Info on the reactor

[mikael]

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

[Phat_Tony]

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.

Re:Hand Built Theremin - Is there any other kind?

[illuminatedwax]

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.