2001-05-31 10:18 ☼ post
Cam’s story about a boyscout building a breeder reactor reminded me of this story about the annual University of Chicago scavenger hunt from a couple years back that was originally featured on Slashdot:
When the judges found out that there was a group that actually built one, they really flipped out… So we’re sitting there making the reactor by my bed and a judge calls and says they’re going to check this out and bring a nuclear physicist to verify it. I don’t think he [the nuclear physicist] understood that we were serious until we started walking him through it and talking about decay change — his eyes just bugged out. He was really speechless,” Kasper said. “He endorsed it for the judges. It was funny because the judges were there taking notes just in case they needed to be able to judge another reactor.
Those crazy college kids, apparently they were inspired by the very same boyscout story that had originally appeared in Harpers just prior to the scavenger hunt.