Atomic Squash

It’s Halloween Time! To celebrate, I made Jack O’ Lanterns with a decidedly nerdy/nuclear twist.

Initially, I thought about creating a Marie Curie silhouette Jack O’Lantern but quickly decided this was beyond my skill level. Instead, I settled on creating two pumpkins displaying the electron shell diagram of radium and polonium, the two elements most closely connected to her. AND, the fact that radium and polonium are radioactive and “glow” was just gravy.

Of course I procrastinated. Friday, after work, I went pumpkin shopping. I went to the first super market and they had one. ONE. Instead of picking it up, I thought I could do better (this one had some green to it’s skin, and I wanted a pure-bred orange pumpkin), and headed down the street to the next grocery store.

The next grocery store had a few more, but they were all of the pie/sugar/baby bear variety. The design I wanted to make was pretty large, and I wanted it to display on the side of the pumpkin, possibly with something on the reverse, but then I began to panic thinking that these pumpkins may in fact be the last available for purchase in the entire city of New Orleans. So, I grabbed two.

Then, I headed back to the first grocery store intent on picking up the larger, green-tinged gourd. I walked in the door but it was gone! Damn it all! I wandered aimlessly around the produce department until I saw some little tiny pumpkins that came six to a package (“Paint Activity Kit”) with instructions and paint! This was ridiculous (and they were SIX dollars!) but they were so cute and I was going into pumpkin hoarding mode, sort of like the storm supply hoarders before a tropical storm. So I bought them.

This is what I ended up with:

Yeah there's a bottle of wine in there too.

So, with my pumpkins (and wine) in-hand I set about carving my pumpkins.

My patterns were roughly the size of an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper; there was no way this was going to fit on the sides of my pumpkins. After heavy consideration, I decided to suspend the project. Kidding! I flipped the pumpkins over and decided to use the patterns on the bottoms, which you will see, actually worked quite well with the designs.

Before transferring the patterns to the pumpkins, I had to do the normal, cut-the-pumpkin-open-scrape-out-the-goo stuff. Here are some pictures!

Pumpkin Goo!

I scraped and scooped for the duration of approximately one Planet Money podcast; I party pretty hard on Friday nights, what can I say. After all the scraping and scooping, here’s what I had:

Pumpkin Floaties!

Sure, I could have just scooped it all into the trash, but I wanted to save the seeds, as roasted pumpkin seeds are one of the best things in the world. So, I put all of the goo into a bowl and filled the bowl with water. Then I scooped out the seeds. This was one of the easiest-to-separate seed/goo compositions I’ve ever worked with, which was a nice change.

Here’s when I really, really wished my sink had a garbage disposal:

Pumpkin Parts in the Sink

Anyway, after everything was separated and I’d cleaned up my mess somewhat, I flipped over pumpkin one and set about fitting the pattern.

Pumpkin Pattern

(Okay, so some of you can probably figure out what my pattern is by now, but for the rest of you, stay tuned.)

I smooshed the pattern cut pieces of paper off the edge where necessary and taped it all down with electrical tape (it was all I could find when my hands were covered in goo and the black + orange was very Halloweeny). Then, I started poking holes through the pattern into the pumpkin flesh with a push pin to transfer the pattern. Approximately a billion of them. Here’s pumpkin one, after I’d punched holes for about two orbits.

Pumpkin Holes

I recommend sitting in front of the TV watching some DVR’d episodes of the Twilight Zone or whatever strikes your fancy. Because this part kind of takes forever. Seriously.

Once all of the orbits were traced with nice little pin pricks, I got out my drill. Drill?! Yes! I used my drill to “transfer” the electrons from my pattern to the pumpkin; I’m sure this is what my dad had in mind when he bought the drill for me. The nice thing about using the drill was that it was powered. After punching approximately a billion holes with a push pin after typing all day, my hands were a little tired. Also, drills make perfectly round holes and you can choose a bit that matches up with the electron size on your pattern.

Here’s what drill + pattern + pumpkin looks like:

Pumpkin Drill Mess

I will say, that you need to press pretty hard/evenly when drilling the holes, otherwise the bit slips and you run the danger of two electrons colliding and/or switching orbits, and we all know what happens then. We don’t? Well, read this.

After making a mess out of the pattern, ripping it in several places and covering my counter with pumpkin goo, I took off the pattern to reveal this!

Pumpkin Unmasked

I really, really needed a pipe-cleaner at this point to ream out the holes I’d drilled. The first time in my life that I’ve had a legitimate use for a pipe-cleaner, and nary a pipe cleaner to be found. So I took a skewer (the kind used for kabobs, but really, are there any other kinds?) and went through each and every hole, to make sure that light could get through. I also counted the holes to make sure that my Jack O’Lantern was accurate; it needed to have 88 holes/electrons. And it did! Hooray!

Once I finished radium, I repeated the entire process for polonium. Same scooping/sorting, same punching of a billion holes, drilling/pattern ripping, etc., until I had this:

Radioactive Pumpkins

See how the stem/blossom spot makes the perfect nucleus!

Polonium and radium pumpkins! Here’s a picture of them aglow, using a candle, sadly, rather than radioactivity:

Pumpkins Aglow

Polonium glowed brighter than radium, which I don’t think is the case in real life. I think this was because the flesh of the polonium pumpkin was a bit softer, and it was the second pumpkin I made, and well, practice makes perfect.

Another picture!