Challenge: Develop a "cannon" whose source of power is a car motor. The team that can shoot a football the furthest wins.

This idea is not fully developed, but presents that universal constraint of all projects, working around a preset limitation. How they use the motor would be completly up to the contestants. They would just be limited to controlling the engine and what they have it do.

This could produce some very creative variations of common solutions. Air cannons, striking arms (powered bats), catapult, etc. Coupling these solutions to a car motor could be a challenge in itself.

Benefit: Show teams having to work around a significant constraint to achieve a solution.

-- Sean McKellips (mckellips@uswest.net), January 31, 2001

Answers

A good idea if the contestants do as you think and make things unnecesarily complicated. However what is to keep them from hooking two tires up to the motor aka a baseball batting cage and being done twenty minutes into the show. George and Cathy would have thier work cut out for them filing in the rest of the time.

-- david Horchak (dhorchak@times-standard.com), February 05, 2001.