Posted on 07/03/2007 11:00:11 AM PDT by neverdem
ROLLA, Mo. — Camp Winnigootchee was never like this.
A group of high school students stood at the edge of a limestone quarry last month as three air horn blasts warned that something big was about to go boom. Across the quarry, with a roar and a cloud of dust and smoke, a 50-foot-high wall of rock sloughed away with a shudder and a long crashing fall, and 20,000 tons of rock was suddenly on the ground.
The campers laughed.
“That’s cool!” said Ian Dalton, a student from Camdenton, Mo.
Austin Shoemaker, a student from Macon, Mo., concurred. “It was baad!” he said. “Do it again!”
There aren’t many wholesome explosions in the news these day, but those are what Summer Explosives Camp provides. It is just a louder, and arguably more exciting, version of the kind of summer experiences designed to recruit students to the quieter academic disciplines. The University of Iowa, for example, has a summer program in microbiology; Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., offers a one-week program in robotics; Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, offers Neuroscience Camp, which includes a trip to a cadaver laboratory to see a brain and spinal cord.
But do those programs, whatever their merits, let the participants blow things up? No, they do not. This program, which does, is set up to draw students to a program at the University of Missouri-Rolla engineering school that feeds industries like mining and demolition.
Imelda Reyes of Kansas City, Mo., a 16-year-old, said she considered attending a more conventional summer program, but, she said, “Watching stuff blow up is better than summer school.”
Students with a passion for all things explosive and proof of United States citizenship pay a $450 fee that covers food, lodging and incidentals like dynamite...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Big badda boom!
COOL!!!!
Is there a camp for adults? :)
“Big badda boom!”
Loved that movie!
I hope there are no muslims at this camp!
Why didn't they have this when I was a Yoot? I had to settle for unsafe, homemade concoctions from The Anarchist Cookbook if I wanted to see anything bigger than a firecracker go off.
marker bump
I was gonna open one and call it Kamp Kordite...
going out to the farm tomorrow to burn things down and blow things up. yahoooooo
In a related story, Rob Reiner and the antismoking groups grovelling at his feet are attempting to sue this facility for making all nearby inhale second-hand smoke from the devices.
/sarc
Can non-students go? I really want to blow stuff up.
When the Surgeon Is Infected, How Safe Is the Surgery?
Juggling Figures, and Justice, in a Doctor’s Trial
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Looks like the NYT is sinking to new depths.
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