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The World's Largest Scavenger Hunt
illuminatedwax writes "Every spring, University of Chicago students attempt to cast off their bookish tendencies and hold the world's largest scavenger hunt. Now, the event has been filmed by the student film group, Fire Escape, as a documentary, and is being sold on DVD and VHS from Periphrastic Films. The film follows the various teams and their effort to procure the off-the-wall 300+ items. For those who haven't heard of the University of Chicago Scav Hunt, its biggest claim to fame is from the 1999 hunt, when
students built a working breeder reactor. Items during the 2002 Scav Hunt featured in the film include "Passports stamped by all three axes of evil", building "terrorist base camps" on the University quads, and students competing in a game show-style contest, featuring a DDR contest, and trivia like "Digits of Pi" and "Taylor Series." The Scav Hunt lists can be found here, and the 2002 list here."
11. Prizes. Prizes are money. And a trophy, apparently.
So I wonder how much money?Sex - Find It
I go to university of chicago but I have no idea how to join this. Is it just for students or what are the rules?
Probably wouldn't be quite what you would expect it to be there. Fraternies at the U of C are... well, still at the U of C.
:-)
Not that that's bad. It's just instead instead of sitting up drinking until 4 am talking about Red Wings, etc., we'd stay up drinking until 4am talking about if Socrates had a death wish at his trial, and how closely Calvin & Hobbes represented their respective namesakes, 17th century philosphers, John Calvin & Thomas Hobbes.
I should know: I was item #153 (complete with flock of sheep) for the 1993 Hunt. Got us (Snell-Hitchcock) 165 points, the win, & my picture in the Chicago Sun-Times.
(Of course, I was glad my mother couldn't make out what exactly the picture was supposed to be off or what was going on.)
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
271. Have a member of the US Congress wish your team best of luck in the ``antient and honorable Scavenger Hunt at the University of Chicago'' on the floor of the House. [435 points. 100 bonus points for a Senator. 50 bonus points for getting both a Republican and Democrat. 100 bonus points for getting Tom Daschle and Trent Lott, or Hillary and Strom to do it]
Unfortunately, no senators, but...
This item can be found in the Congressional Record (available at http://thomas.loc.gov). Search for "scavenger hunt" and "University of Chicago"
here's a respons from the creator of the reactor to some web board back in '99 when they did it:
Alright, I just want to set a couple things straight, so here are some
responses to oft heard comments the last few days:
1. "I assume they used U-238 to get to Pu-239..." we did not start
with any uranium or plutonium, that would have ruined the fun, and the
point was to make fissionable materials. Our starting material was
thorium, which can be found at any hardware store. we happened to have
some in our dorm room... The final products were Uranium 233 and
Plutonium 238. I'm not going to spoon feed the decay chains to anyone,
you can figure it out yourself if you really need to.
2. "You endangered the life of my son!" We created a neutron source
using some shit we pulled out of a trash can. This source was safer and
less radioactive than the radioisotope Americium 241 found in the smoke
detector in each of your rooms.
3. "Someone said your roommate lost his job because he built a nuclear
reactor" Neither I nor my rommmate have lost our jobs since doing this.
4. "I hear you paid another group to steal Plutonium for you" We did
not steal Uranium or Plutonium from anywhere. Nor did we have anyone
else steal some for us.
5. "but to qualify as a true breeder, doesn't the reaction have to be
self-sustaining?" No. A breeder reactor just means taking advantage of
all those tasty neutrons flying off from whatever source you have, be it
a sustained fission reaction or a naturally radioactive source. The
best neutron source on campus would be the Physics Dept's neutron
howitzer. But since the howitzer produces neutrons from the decay of
Plutonium, you have to agree it would be silly to use it to try and make
plutonium.
6. "(I'll be really impressed if the two come up with a micro-fusion
reactor.)" We'd fly back next year just for that one...
- Juniper Tasks
Just some clarification for the readers who've forgotten their nuclear
physics:
U-235 is the fissionable used in the Hiroshima bomb and Pu-239
in the Nagasaki bomb. U-238 is used in fast breeder reactors
to make weapons grade Pu-239. (U-238 is also used in fission-fusion-fission
bombs, so technically it is fissionable with a net gain of energy
but you need really fast neutrons).
Thorium was to have been used in slow breeder reactor technology which
turns out U-233 as its fissionable. (Is Pu-238 fissionable at low neutron
energies with a net gain? The even Z makes me think not...)
I thought you had started with depleted uranium to make a fast breeder;
didn't know the thorium isotope available from hardware stores was the
one used in slow breeders.
Well, with a small sample of thorium and a neutron source, you can make
the U-233. But with a fully functioning breeder don't you need some of the
U-233 created to fission and transform the rest of the thorium without
running away and slagging the reactor or damping out so you never
end up with more thorium than whatever's directly exposed to your
neutron source? I suppose the nuclear engineering definition of a
breeder has to be more pragmatic.
Fred and Justin didn't begin with any uranium.
(Uranium, after all, ain't a commonly available thing.) They began with some
thorium and an alpha source, which they just happened to have lying
around. They used the alpha source to make a neutron source, and bombarded
the thorium. This induced a chain of reactions, the final products of
which were fissionable uranium and plutonium.
The best part of this is always the road trip, and that has not been mentioned really. You have about four days to get someplace far, far away and back with a ton of stuff. One year we went to New Orleans and NYC the next (in a rented Neon) in a whirlwind tour of taking photos and items, all in a rush to decipher where to go along the route. (If they told you outright where you were going and where you had to stop, it wouldn't be fun.) Definitely the best part.
Why in the world did East Germany have the word "democratic" in its official name? Isn't North Korea called the Democratic Republic of Korea? Makes no sense to me. Anyone know why a dictatorships and a puppet government would think they're democratic?
s for a longer list.
It's old-line Communist terminology. They consider(ed) themselves "democratic" because Communism is a "dictatorship of the proletariat".
The tip-off is the formula "Democratic Republic", sometimes prefixed with "Peoples": "Peoples Democratic Republic of [Region, Language Group, State Name]. This is a standard Communist namiong convention. Where it originated, I'm not sure.
It's meant also, I think, to pointedly imply that they're the "opposite" of "fascists", another term with a lot of baggage attached. Communists (Soviets and their fellow travellers worldwide, especially Comintern) used "Fascist" as a broad brush with which to stain any rightist opponents, from actual Fascists (Nazis, Falangists, etc.) to moderates.
Communist terminology can be fascinating. Words and phrases acquired specific connotations, and so indicated to Communist Party members what their opinion should be, without the embarrasement of having to inquire what the current Party line was. Examples include "[rootless] cosmopolitan", a code-word for "Jewish", "social-fascist" for a moderate leftist, "internationalism" for doing what the Sovets wanted, the self-explanatory "enemy of the people", and the Chinese, not Soviet, but always fun "running dog".
See http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/insults.html#rootles
Terminology used by Communists also tended to move in lock-step, because Communist parties worldwide in the twentieth century tended to be regimented and tighly controlled, ultimately by Comintern and the USSR.
This was espcially important in the 1930s through '50s, as Soviet (and thus worldwide Communist) policy went through dizzyingly swift changes over the course of Stalin's purges, the Hitler-Stalin pact, Hitler's invasion of Russia, and then the Cold War.
A good (and suprising, to me) example of the swift policy changes is evident on the Pete Seeger's CD "Pioneer of Folk". The CD, released in 1999, is a compilation of Seeger's songs of the early 1940s, and opens with "Round And Round Hitler's Grave", in which the singer strongly advocates fighting Germany. But halfway through the CD are the songs "Washington Breakdown", and "C for Conscription" in which Seeger roundly criticizes Franklin Roosevelt for wanting to engage the US in the European war. Sandwiched in between these two songs is "Dear Mr. President", in which Seeger reads an open letter to Rooselvelt, acknowledging to past differences, enumerating a number of progressive issues Seeger feels need addressing, but asserting that Hitler won't solve anybody's problems. In the meantime, of course, Hitler had abrogated his pact with Stalin and invaded Russia, and Communist policy had reversed itself.
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