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Nation's Most Creative Minds Featured at Brooklyn Building Competition

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110711/LA32950 )

July 7 -- The Kick-Off

Having previously been withheld, the official build topic was announced on the morning of July 7th: Energy in Motion. Gathered along Brooklyn's waterfront at Newtown Barge Park, the 16 teams dove headfirst into the build-a-thon, a looming clock counting down above their heads. From there, the park would remain home base for all building and labor, but each team would have to claw their way across the city, hoarding any materials fit to be repurposed and reinvented.

July 10 -- Judgment Day

Months of imagineering, thousands of miles traveled (or in the case of the NYC teams competing, a couple really long blocks), all led to the final Brooklyn showdown.  McCarren Park was transformed into an alternate universe of iPad-controlled water balloon wars, mechanical bulls made of tires, a consciousness-altering performance by instrumental wizard, That 1 Guy, and of course, the stage for 16 teams to show the world what they (and their implausibly brilliant creations) were made of.  The results? Predictably genius.  To name a few...

There was Innovative Thirst's clay-powered mobile pod, complete with an electricity-generating swing set.  There was Harford Hackerspace's "Chillerpillar," an extremely dangerous to operate, mechanical inch worm.  NYC Resistor took it back to the 1800s and presented the steampunk's version of an off-road trolley car.  With a total of 50 bucks spent, Hack RVA unveiled the invention every kid in every supermarket parking lot in history has gotten yelled at by their mom for trying to create: A shopping cart that does its own poppa-wheelies.

Donner Party 2.0 lifted the curtain on the clean-energy vehicle of tomorrow: An electrical hybrid tricycle with a dryer attached that doubles as a gigantic blender.  Saving the planet while downing margaritas immediately entered the minds of all.  Team Doublewide managed to sufficiently creep out an entire audience with their puppet-ized take on Johnny 5, "The Amazing Cyclo" (shivers just at the thought of waking up, seeing that thing crackin' eggs and flipping pancakes.)  If there was an award given for 'most mind-blowingly fun-looking thing likely to land you in the ICU,' then San Fran's Techshop would've taken it home.  Their evolutionary take on the see-saw not only rotated 360 degrees, but its seats lifted 12 feet in the air and...wait for it...it even had an accelerometer that detected when the see-saw was going fast enough to trigger an attached Polaroid camera which snapped pictures of the riders' faces.

The Pet Museum: (anti)social philosophy of the hamster

The Archbishop of Mayence, so says an old German legend, bought up all the corn of the surrounding country, and stored it in his castle, situated upon one of the many beautiful islands in the Rhine. The famine he thus occasioned extended not only to the human inhabitants, but reached the greedy hamsters. Scenting the treasure of the wicked bishop afar off, they joined together in great multitudes, swam across to his palace, and in one night devoured him from off the face of the earth.

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