I finally decided how to get outside, keep people a proper distance away, AND break a Guinness World Records Title during the shutdown.

I took my fire sword!

I went for the Guinness World Record’s Title for most catches in 30 seconds with a fire sword. The previous record was 28 (my attempt over last summer for 1 minute was approved but for reasons that may never be understood, the 30-second version with 31 catches was disqualified).

I went out to the cul-de-sac across the street, the neighbors came out of their houses and lines the cul-de-sac maintaining proper distance. And then I started flipping the 20-inch wick lit with liquid charcoal lighter fluid making complete 360 degree turns nearly twice a second.

I don’t have much hair left on the back of my right hand, but my skin is still intact other than where the hand-washing has left it so dry the skin has split.

I’m pretty sure this won’t be the last record attempt during the lockdown.

Thanks to the neighbors who came out Dee, Charles, Kari and Jonathan!

Picked up by national news aggregation site as well:

https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/04/03/Idaho-man-flips-flaming-sword-57-times-in-30-seconds/7211585929477

The balloons were no match for my feet… other than it took two tries to break this record. Setup is time -consuming so it’s good that the major mishap that required me to restart the attempt happened early in the first attempt and we only had to replace the first dozen balloons or so.

The record was for the fastest time to pop 100 balloons with the feet. The balloons were required to be in a single straight line and only the bare feet could be used to pop them. The balloons were also required to have a minimum 20 cm diameter (~8 inches).

Before the attempt, I spoke to the youth group about the power of having a growth mindset and some of the failures and setbacks I’ve faced in life and how I overcame some of them.

I thankfully had plenty of help blowing up balloons and taping them to the floor since it takes a lot of time. Unfortunately, I did most of the taping and didn’t do a very good job (ok, so the tape was pretty weak). That led to the first big mishap on the first official attempt. About 10 balloons in one didn’t pop and bounced out of the line. I tried to step on it while it was in the air and that just bounced it off the ground and even higher into the air. I did it again with an even worse result. I had the frame of mind to stop there, setup the line again replacing only the first dozen balloons, and have another layer of tape added to all 100 balloons. It almost worked. On the second try I made it 80% of the way through before a balloon bounced off the line. I let it settle on the ground before trying to step on it, poped it that time, and raced back to the line to complete the attempt.

I wasn’t sure if I’d done it. The first time I tried to break the record for the fastest time to burst 200 balloons with a nail, I had balloons coming off the wall and wasted too much time trying to pop them and came up a few seconds slow. Fortunately, this time I broke the record of 29.7 seconds with a run of 23.69 seconds.

Thanks to everyone who helped with the attempt!

I broke a Guinness World Records Title at the Boise State University Science and Engineering Festival for the 5th year in a row. Four years ago I broke my second ever Guinness World Record here and have been back every year since to show that if you set your mind to a goal, believe in yourself, and pursue it with a passion, you can accomplish anything (if you don’t let all the pesky failures in the interim get in the way).

I had a 20-pound kettlebell that I had to pass hand to hand 100 times. The previous record was 24.62 seconds. The hard part isn’t necessarily passing the weight hand to hand that fast, it’s doing it that fast without ever letting both hands touch the weight at the same time. If I have 99 passes as speed and 1 bad one, the whole thing is disqualified. I had to film the entire attempt in 240 fps and even after stepping through frame-by-frame I had 3 transfers I used other angles to double-check they were all good.

I had a very supportive audience who stuck with me for several attempts (I went ahead and made my warmup attempts official in case I got it) and the aspiring scientists and engineers were amazing.

Thanks to the team!

There were four serious ultimate players in this attempt and then myself. We were trying to challenge the Guinness World Records title for the fastest 20-meter flying disc relay and I knew I had to bring out the big guns.

The previous record was 8.74 seconds. We marked out 20 meters and every 5 meters in-between. After a few warmup runs we landed on a final try of 6.83 seconds and called it a night.

Thanks to Mike and Becky, Dusty, and Chris for putting in the years of practice at ultimate and showing up prepared to make this one happen.

This is my last post of the year. Goal complete: 52 Guinness World Records in 52 weeks (with quite a bit of buffer 🙂 )!

This record was with Mike Beacham for the most behind the back frisbee catches in one hour. The mark to beat was 1,400. We didn’t create the record, but whoever did was never able to successfully challenge it.

We broke the 1-minute variety of this record last year with 51 catches in a minute. Before that, the record was 37. We averaged 36.2 catches per minute for the entire hour, so we’re feeling pretty good.

Published in the news: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2019/12/31/Idaho-man-makes-2173-behind-the-back-disc-catches-in-1-hour/4831577825993

Mike threw about 2,520 frisbees in the hour and I caught 2,173 of them for an 86.2% catch rate. That’s a B+ in my book. While not good enough in school, that’s good enough to beat the Guinness mark by over 50%. We crossed 1,400 catches in just over 39 minutes giving us over 20 minutes to pad the stats.

The tips of my fingers were bloodied by the end with the (wisely trimmed) fingers nails smashed in. We had several stretches of great throws and Mike was spot on most of the time. With over 2,500 throws through, he gave me a few changes to make the highlight reel and you can catch a few of them in the video above.

Thanks to the team: Mike, Mark, Chris, Dusty, Kathi, Jennifer, Becky, and the kids! The frisbee collectors (Dusty and Kathi) may have had the most strenuous jobs and the witnesses had to stay laser-focused to keep count.

I had less than 400 milliseconds on average between each ball that came my way. That’s the same amount of time it takes a 100MPH pitch to reach home plate from the pitcher’s hand. Fortunately, Jonathan wasn’t throwing them quite that fast, but he was throwing them that frequently.

The record was for the most catches in 30 seconds while standing on a balance board. The previous record was 46. Did we think we could beat over 1.5 per second? You bet.

Beyond the obvious, there were a couple of extra things that made this one tricky: 1) the catching hand has to alternate, otherwise the attempt ends immediately. This isn’t so bad if you catch every ball. If you miss one, there are only milliseconds to adjust and catch the next ball with the same hand instead of the other one. 2) the legs have to remain straight for the duration of the attempt. I’m not sure why Guinness has this rule, but it’s way easier to adjust the balance on a balance board with bent knees, and 3) it was a live audience and show so the pressure was on.

On the first try, we had a bad start and I think I may have bent my knee so we stopped early. On the second try, we did much better but the throw speed was a little inconsistent. Jonathan would throw a slow one that arched and then a fast one right behind it and I had 2 arrive at the same time a couple of times. We still broke the record but went at it one more time for good measure.

There were 79 throws, 68 catches, 11 misses, and one caught after 30 seconds expired for a new Guinness World Record’s Title of 67 catches in 30 seconds while standing on a balance board.

Thanks to the Boise Centre for having me out to give a talk on Growth Mindset at the employee growth conference and for allowing us to make an official Guinness World Record attempt.

Thanks for having us out!

I had the privilege of being invited onto the Huckabee show last week. I jumped at the opportunity to promote STEM education, talk about the power of a growth mindset, and of course break a Guinness World Records Title. I flew down to the filming in Hendersonville, Tennessee. In this case, I was shooting to reclaim a title I had formerly held that was last broken on Britain’s Got Talent by Jaw Rawlings earlier this year.

The record was for the most chairs balanced on this chin at one time. I broke it the first time in June of 2018 balancing 8 chairs in a single stack on my chin besting the minimum mark of 5. They had to be held on the chin for over 10 seconds to qualify. Ashrita Furman broke it with 9 and Jay 11 on BGT with 11. I went on the set and decided I would try up to 15. I didn’t get to practice with the chairs until earlier that afternoon when I arrived on set since they were shipped straight there.

When I arrived for my rehearsal, I started with one chair to warm up, then 8 which was the previous record, then 11 to see if I could tie the record. I couldn’t try any more without help since I couldn’t get that many chairs up to my chin safely without help.

The 15 chairs weighed over 60 lbs altogether and bounced like a spring on my chin making it quite the challenge to keep balanced. I was able to do it in practice with the assistants lifting the 15 chairs on my chin, the question is if I’d be able to pull it off in front of the live audience.

The filming for the show is done for a live audience of about 100 people and I had a nice interview with Governor Huckabee about why I break Guinness World Records Titles (you can check it out below from the Huckabee channel). I then went on to attempt it live. I got just a little nervous and it took me 4 tries to get a run that lasted over 10 seconds to break the record. A video review confirmed I kept all 15 chairs balanced on my chin for 10.4 seconds to break a Guinness World Records Title.

(Not that record, I’m talking vinyl records)

I gave a talk to the kids at Futures Public Charter School describing my journey from not being smart enough for the gifted program to getting an electrical engineering degree from MIT and from having no Guinness World Records 4 short years ago to having over 130 today.

I juggled, balanced, and hopefully inspired kids to believe they can do more than they thought possible, especially when working on challenging problems. I loved the kids’ reactions and their support.

I then attempted to break the Guinness World Record’s Title for “most vinyl records smashed in 30 seconds”. The previous record was 38. The records were removed from their cases and inspected for micro fractures before the attempt. A few were found with small holes drilled near their center (maybe indicating that they were no longer playable?) Those were all removed before the attempt.

I had 30 seconds to break them completely, one at a time using only my hands. I started off strong and did well until I got a few records that were more flexible than the rest and instead of breaking they only flexed. In practice, I discovered it’s much faster to drop it and move on to the next instead of trying even hard. If I take up precious seconds there’s a chance it might break, but sometimes the records just bend all the way in half and never breaks.

When time was called I had broken 38. It was good enough to tie the record but I wanted to do even better. We lined up another stretch of records and tried again. This time I went even faster. I was doing great until again, I ran into a stretch that just flexed. I touched 46 records in 30 seconds but 7 didn’t break and had to be disqualified. The final count was 39. A new Guinness World Records Title!

As soon as I finished I realized my hands were covered in a half dozen cuts from the shards of the fractured records. The kids could see the blood and showed their concern but I was happy to have broken the record and assured them that my hands would be fine. It was a wise decision to wear safety goggles for this one.

Thanks to Amanda, Estee, Chris, and Future’s Public Charter School for having me out to inspire kids to pursue STEM with a Growth Mindset!