Anybody can smash a pumpkin, but students at Caltech do it on a grand scale, dropping liquid-nitrogen-frozen pumpkins from the tallest building on campus—Millikan Library—to shatter on the ground below. Over the decades the ritual—begun by undergraduates from Dabney House in 1972—has become a festive annual event, complete with a cordoned-off safety zone for spectators and even a light show.
On Halloween this year, one Dabney student offered her summation of the event: "We just dropped a bunch of frozen pumpkins nine stories off the top of Millikan and they are frozen so they exploded in a billion pieces—and it's awesome. Pumpkin drop is super fun!"
