Why? Image: Michigan Engineering/ YouTube
Halloween is around the corner and with it comes a deluge of fancy pumpkin carvings. Homes across America will light up with ill-conceived and poorly carved jack-o-lanterns. Social media will explode with finely carved gourds in the style of Taylor Swift and Donald Trump.Most of us will use a knife to carve our Halloween pumpkins, some will use a waterjet, but it's a safe bet no one will use molten aluminum. No one except engineering students at the University of Michigan College of Engineering."People always think of pumpkin pie, pumpkin carving. These are great things. But whoever thinks of pumpkin casting?" Timothy Chambers, Engineering Technician at the University asked the camera in a video about pumpkin destruction.No one, Timothy. No one. The Michigan engineers opened up an innocent gourd and dumped melted aluminum inside. The metal then fused to the inside of the pumpkin as it cooled, creating a rock of solid pumpkin guts.Pumpkin carving is a beautiful, traditional art form where friends and families gather to deface a gourd. Jack-o-lanterns last just long enough to look beautiful before local teenager smash them after everyone else has gone to bed.What the Michigan Engineers are proposing destroys the pumpkin to create a molten mass no one wanted. Leave a hunk of metal in place of jack-o-lantern and those same local teens will likely use to break some windows.When it comes to pumpkins, carve, don't melt.
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