Pumpkin Drop—A Quarter-Century-Plus BU Tradition

Each year the BU physics department draws throngs of spectators from far and wide to its iconic late fall Pumpkin Drop, providing lessons in gravitation, velocity, and energy transition as the various-size vegetables filled with substances from pudding to paint (the messier the better) affecting their rate and trajectory, are hurled from the Metcalf Science Center roof to the plaza below. On October 31, 2006 (Halloween), jester William Skocpol (aka a CAS professor emeritus of physics) was among the hurlers. This year’s drop, appropriately, is again on Halloween. Photo by BU Photography