Courtesy of Wen Chen

Families from the community crowd around a pumpkin about to be smashed.

“Three, two, one, smash!” yelled junior Ben Guo as two metal rods swiftly moved, crushing the 8-lbs pumpkin within seconds.  

This was one of over 40 smashes on the double pneumatic horizontal pumpkin smasher in an event held in the quad the day after Halloween. 

The fourth annual STEM Madness at Saratoga High School (SMASH)  doubled its participation from previous years with over 750 guests and over 1,000 lbs of pumpkin smashed throughout two lively hours.

Along with the purple smasher, the team also used a vertical piston smasher and a 40-lbs sledgehammer as devices to crush more than 100 pumpkins. 

Only a handful of Cuttlefish members were allowed to operate  the smashers to ensure safety for the attendees. Guests would get their pumpkin registered at the pumpkin coordinating table, where volunteers would number the pumpkin  and measure its width and weight. 

Before smashing it, the cuttlefish would invite the owners of the pumpkin number to come up to the table and press the button in order to smash the pumpkin. 

The event was initially launched in 2022 by Class of ‘23 alumna Emily Lu, who was creating various mechanical projects, such as a multi-tiered worm bin for vermicomposting food scraps. The summer before her senior year, she came up with the idea of smashing used pumpkins to raise awareness about composting. 

Throughout the years, robotics team and event host 6165 MSET Cuttlefish has created a new pumpkin smasher each year. This year, the team decided to take a break from making new smashers, deeming it unnecessary. With a completely new team, they decided they needed that time to improve and learn to use the old smashers.   

“It was fun to use concepts that we already use in FTC robotics and apply them to these bigger SMASHers. For example, to control the movement of the hammer on the green smasher [we use] Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) , and we use the same thing in FTC to control servos,” junior Maxwell Tham said. 

Even though the team had more time to fix the smashers, due to the novelty of the team’s experience, it took a long time to learn and optimize the smashers. The team fixed the vertical pneumatic smasher only hours before the event began.  

Along with the pumpkin smashers, over 40 student clubs, activities and other California tinkerers and makers hosted booths in an exhibition. Attendees could go from booth to booth and choose what to do, including creating and participating in different activities and visiting creations from different makers.

 

This year’s SMASH featured many clubs in order to raise awareness about different missions and activities around the high school. Over 20 student clubs attended, including the 3D Print and Design Club, STEMist Club, Microcontroller Club and Next Generation of Women in Medicine Club.

 

On the management side, the team had been planning the event since mid-July. Closer to the event, the team met each week to plan advertising, reaching out to clubs and makers, as well as coordinating purchases.

“This year, we really wanted to push the number [of guests] up and we had to do that in numerous ways including pushing for more advertising by finding more places to demo our robots and advertise our event,” senior Lucius Ko said. 

 

 The team reached out to over 40 makers across the state, eventually hosting six makers including Slugbotics, the robotics team at the University of California at Santa Cruz; Lilaque Nails, which sells Soy-Based Gel System and Ted Harris, who creates robotic monsters. 

 

 

The Cuttlefish also experimented and hosted different activities such as Elephant Toothpaste, Oobleck, String Art Designs and LED Flashlights. Although finding the experiments and buying materials was not a huge issue, they faced many issues with finding volunteers to run this booth.

The team also hosted demonstrations for robots at eight events and sent flyers to over 30 organizations in order to promote the event. They also invited the Saratoga Fire Department, which the children enjoyed. With 500 attendees expected, the team was extremely pleased with the huge turnout. 

Ko said, “It felt really rewarding to see those kids cheer and laugh when they saw their pumpkins get smashed, putting together articulated hands and leaving the event happily with their prize after completing the events.”