Caltech ditch day

Colleges & Universities California Institute of Technology
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<p>To all the current Techers: I know ditch day was a few days ago. Care to share some interesting stacks with those of us trying to survive our last few days of HS? ;)</p>

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<p>One part of the stack I was on involved navigating/crawling/contorting through a laser maze in an extremely dark section of the tunnels. It would take six people to activate, and all six would have to go through without obstructing any beams in order to activate another thing, again requiring all six people. This would then give us a key to decrypt a message. </p>

<p>After kicking up a little bit of dust, the maze was beautiful to just look at. I think there were at least 100 mirrors over about 70 feet. Platforms were bolted into the walls, and the mirrors were mounted on those using hot glue. Obstruction of any beam would cause the maze to turn off, and we would have to start over. It was both an astounding feat of engineering done in someone’s spare time and a lot of fun. </p>

<p>You can’t see much withh the flash, but there’s a picture here: <a href=“http://img76.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lasermazeintunnels8bm.jpg[/url]”>ImageShack - Best place for all of your image hosting and image sharing needs;
The stuff taped to the ceiling is the laser and the circuitry for the decryption key. The place on the left of the picture where one guy has his hands against the wall is a pair of aluminum foil pads. The 6 pairs of pads had to be touched simultaneously in order to activate the maze. On the right side of the picture, there’s a little square thing on the wall. That’s a mirror mounted on a plastic platform. </p>

<p>More pictures are available here: <a href=“http://pr.caltech.edu/events/ditchday/2006/pictures/index.html[/url]”>http://pr.caltech.edu/events/ditchday/2006/pictures/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>On page 26 there’s a pool of gross-looking stuff. I don’t know what it was, but when I put my arm in it, my arm came out only slightly damp. Cool stuff. </p>

<p>The group with the red shirts with crossed swords on them were part of a “Repel the Harvey Mudd Invasion” stack. At the end of the day, the senior who made the stack showed up with 13 or 14 Harvey Mudd students and engaged his stackees in a pitched water balloon and wet noodle fight. </p>

<p>Page 37 is nice too. </p>

<p>Ditch Day is kind of heartwarming in that the seniors spend a very large amount of their free time to build a fun day for the underclassmen. Waking up on the morning of Ditch Day is kind of like waking up Christmas morning when you’re 6 years old.</p>

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<p>That was a stack from my house- I believe it was water, guar gum and Borax. Apparently it took the people doing the stack a half hour to get up the nerve to go in. But they had quite a lot of fun once they did so.</p>

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<p>Only with more loud music and door pounding and shouts of “Wake up frosh, it’s DITCH DAAAAAAAAY!”</p>

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<p>The top album here shows a few pictures of my stack:</p>

<p><a href=“http://caltech.facebook.com/photos.php?id=3500519&l=028fa[/url]”>http://caltech.facebook.com/photos.php?id=3500519&l=028fa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Yay! Finally a junior…</p>

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Not really. It’s ambigious at best. The consensus I gathered is that it happens when ghosts walk. I’ve also heard the smore’s just go through ‘purgatory’ until they slowly ease into being juniors.</p>

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<p>We’re juniors when the cannon fires on commencement day, I think.</p>

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<p>Yes</p>

<p>.</p>

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<p>Yup you must always have both frosh and seniors, which means that frosh become sophomores when the cannon fires after rotation of their second year (about 1 week in). That’s when prefrosh become frosh as well. Sophomores become juniors at the firing of the cannon on commencement, and juniors become seniors when the seniors become ghosts when the cannon fires at the end of ditch day.</p>

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<p>I’ll post pics from the senior end of ditch-day in a couple days.</p>

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<p>nooooooooooo, i forgot that point, my life is miserable now</p>