On Saturday the 27th from 2-5 PM JUMP is hosting their Free Innovation Day. There will be all sorts of fun activities for kids and adults alike including a Guinness World Record attempt starting at 2:30 for “Longest Duration Balancing an Object on the Head”. The attempt will take place on the 6th floor of JUMP in the Pioneer room. For this record, the object has to be long and skinny and over 2.5 lbs. The mark to beat is 30 minutes.
Celebrate invention and innovation with this FREE community event! Come see amazing student inventions with Invent Idaho, play with the latest cutting-edge technology with Boise State groups: Creative Technology Association, Space Broncos, Boise State Microgravity Team, GIMM, Citizen Scientific Workshop, BSU Makerlab. And hang out with the Library! and Boise Metro Engineering for Kids. You can also watch David Rush work to meet the official Guinness World Record for longest duration balancing an object on the head at 2:30 PM. This is a great chance to explore JUMP, connect with the community and get your innovation on! All ages.
A few minutes after noon I placed a 5-pound guitar on my forehead. Ten minutes later I had nearly doubled the existing Guinness World Record for “Longest Duration Balancing a Guitar on the Forehead” of 5 minutes 20 seconds.
Thanks to the team!
KTVB 7 News came out and Brian and I did a joint interview on STEM and how small businesses like Porter Pickups are the real drivers of economic growth in America. We hear a lot about the giant tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple. But there are only a handful of these super employers. There are hundreds of thousands of small businesses like his that are also providing economic growth on a much larger scale but are more distributed so we don’t hear about any one of them nearly as much.
There is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math all over Porter Pickups. Starting with the pickups themselves which are a transducer, which means they convert one type of energy to another (think of them as the microphone for an electric guitar). They’re made up up a magnet and wound coils. The magnet creates a magnetic field and when a guitar player plucks the string (which is metal) it disturbs the magnetic field. When a magnetic field is disturbed it induces a current in any nearby metal wire that’s in a closed loop (the coil) and that current is then amplified and broadcast through a speaker creating that electric guitar sound we all know (and most love).
KTVB 7 Interview
Then there’s the CNC machine that needs to be programmed to cut out guitar bodies and the math behind how many coils to put around each magnet. Even if you don’t major in a STEM degree, understanding how the world of science and technology works can be extremely important to running a business.
Passing 5 minutes 20 seconds to break the previous Guinness markDuring the attempt with 5 cameras runningThanks to Brian and Kathleen Porter for having me in to set a world record! (and Brian thanked me for not dropping and breaking his guitar).
I’m continuing the series of longest duration balancing an object.
Next up: the guitar on the forehead. The current record is 5 minutes 20 seconds.
On Thursday, December 21st I’ll attempt the longest forehead guitar balance on the shortest day of the year so as to cover the highest percentage of daylight possible.
It’ll be at Porter Pickups in Garden City at noon if you want to stop by.
I was hoping to use one of Brian Porter’s awesome electric guitars (image above also taken by Brian) using his world-famous pickups, but electric guitars are shorter than standard acoustic guitars so they don’t meet the minimum length requirement set by Guinness.
I got to celebrate my 33rd birthday setting my 33rd Guinness World Record for STEM.
I ran end zone to end zone on the famous blue turf at Boise State. While there weren’t 11 people trying to tackle me, I did do it while juggling. That wasn’t the hard part though. The hard part that puts this in Guinness World Record territory is that I did it while blindfolded.
102 yards to take it to the house.
It was 26 degrees and my fingers were frozen but the team came out to support so I didn’t want to let them down. It took 34 seconds (and a few tries) but the mark of 30 meters was surpassed.
Wednesday is my 33rd birthday, and I can think of no better way to celebrate than to attempt to break my 33rd Guinness World Record.
I will combine the 3 specialties that few in the world can (or would want to) claim: juggling, running, and doing both blindfolded.
I will attempt to set the inaugural mark for “Greatest distanced travelled whilst juggling three objects blindfolded”. The minimum mark set is 30 meters.
The backdrop will be the famous Boise State University Blue turf 3 days before they play their bowl game in Las Vegas. I will attempt to start juggling while blindfolded in one end zone and without stopping, dropping a ball, or regaining my sight, I will attempt to end up in the other end zone. The saving grace is that there won’t be 11 people on the field trying to tackle me… I actually don’t know which is harder: kickoff returned for a touchdown or this…
On Wednesday the 13th at 11:30 AM, it’s supposed to be 28 degrees outside so I’m hoping my fingers are still functional enough to make it.
If you’d like to come watch you’ll be able to see the field from the patio at the Hall of Fame museum. I also still need a couple people to film and witness if you’d like to volunteer and get on the field.
I found out a couple of my world records for balloon popping were featured on KTLA morning news in LA. The anchor has been doing segments trying to break world records on the show as part of his “Friday Feats”.
I would actually argue that he’s not really that terrible at it. I just spent a lot more time preparing than he did. As the article calls out, it’s a team effort and the folks at Lake Hazel Library brought their A-game. While I would consider this to be one of the “easiest” world records I’ve broken, that just means I only spent about a dozen hours on it. I built quad strength by practicing, I tried several chairs and knew having a low chair or supports on the side was bad. I practiced with the team a week before the event, filmed that practice, and reviewed it with the team (timing is VERY important). We contained the balloons and had a bigger team to collect and place the balloons. I also wore bike shorts underneath my other shorts (if you watch the video you’ll find out why this is important!)
At the time this aired the Guinness World Records title hadn’t been fully verified, but it is now:
Tonight I broke my 30th world record. I balanced a pool cue on my forehead for 1 hour 3 minutes 14 seconds. And my neck still feels every second of it. And an hour after the attempt I still have a divot in my forehead.
But STEM education is being promoted and I’m still having fun.
I did have a bit of a scare at the Boise airport this morning flying to Chicago since I did not know you couldn’t carry a pool cue onto a plane. More on that below.
Thanks to the Oak Brook Public library for hosting me!
My neck was in a significant amount of pain as I have never stared at the sky for this long before. I got close balancing a hoe on my nose but didn’t have tilt my head back as far for that one. When I balanced the hula hoop on my forehead I was swimming and was able to angle my body forward as well so my neck wasn’t tilted as far back. My feet started falling asleep halfway through, but in the end, I made it over an hour to set my 30th world record.
But who knew cues weren’t allowed in carry-on bags? I put it in the same category as a tennis racket, or the metal tripods I was also carrying in my baggage. Did I look at the TSA website where it clearly states they’re not allowed? Of course not. In my usual fashion I left home a little more than an hour before the flight but ran into traffic merging onto the freeway so didn’t arrive until less than 40 minutes to take off. This wouldn’t have been a problem. I got through the metal detector to find I had been selected for additional random electronic screening. This wouldn’t have been a problem either. Then I grabbed my pool cue and they said it wasn’t allowed. I’m 25 minutes until take off at this point. It takes 4 minutes for the electronic screening and they offer to dispose of my cue or escort me out of security. I chose the escort and sprinted to the United counter. They saw me running and were immediately very helpful. The flight was closed so they couldn’t check it. Was there a later flight I could take? Yes. Was there someone I could give the cue to? No. Maybe the cue could make the next flight? They were too helpful. There was a TSA agent nearby and they grabbed him to help. Someone offered to check it anyway and see if it could get on the flight. They printed a gate check tag even though the flight was closed and I handed the guy 2 sticks. “Do you have a bag for these?” No. They found some plastic, wrapped up the sticks and put a priority sticker on them. I sprinted back to security, made it through and sprinted to the gate to find a smiling agent say I was just in time. I wondered the whole time if my cue had a chance. I landed in Chicago and used the beta track my bags feature and it said they had arrived. They had. They were undamaged and they were used to set my 30th world record tonight!
Tomorrow, in the Oak Brook Public Library outside Chicago I will attempt to stare straight up for over 1 hour. I will be staring up at a pool cue to keep it balanced on my forehead. If successful, I will set my 30th Guinness World Record.
A cue balanced on the forehead is an inverse pendulum (think Grandfather clock upside down, or a Segway but with an extra axis of freedom). The tipping acceleration is inversely proportional to the center of gravity so the higher the center of gravity, the slower it tips. I’ll have the fat end up for a higher center of gravity.
The hard part about this attempt is actually keeping my neck bent up for an hour… which I have never in my life done before. The closest I got was 42 minutes balancing a hoe on my nose a couple months ago.
This morning I raked (and bagged) about 35,000 leaves in 1 minute. I may be off by a little bit since I’m estimating. Officially I raked 15.725 kg of leaves in 1 minute.
I was promoting Rake up Boise with Neighborworks Boise which is another thing that makes Boise a wonderful place to live besides a thriving economy driven by technology.
Using my estimating skills honed as an engineer and doing a couple sanity checks is how I arrived at a 35,000 leaf estimate. If you count the number of leaves in the air in this title picture there are about 100. I figure there were a little less than 100 handfuls like that in each bad for about 35,000 leaves. In a sanity check, if each one of these small, dead, try leaves weights about .5 grams then you get a little over 30,000 leaves at 15.725 kg. A search on the internet lead me to find 25,000 dead Oak tree leaves weight less than 70 kg and these were a lot smaller than oak leaves so I’m in the ballpark.
Tomorrow I attempt to break the Guinness World Record for “Most Leaves Raked in 1 minute” in partnership with NeighborWorks Boise who puts on Rake up Boise, Paint the Town, and other activities that help make Boise one of the best cities in the world to live in. Put a high tech workforce and a generous community together and you get some amazing results. Continue reading No Leaf Unturned→
Promoting STEM education through my story and juggling
