Drop a water balloon as far as possible without it bursting

Task stats

Points

14

Disquals

1

• Julie identifies that she needs to cushion the balloon's landing, so fetches some actual cushions, featuring Lasse's face, from inside the house. She also holds out a hammock, intending to catch the balloon, and has Mark release it from the lift device. Though she does not manage to catch it, the balloon does hit one of the cushions, and survives its fall. She is awarded third place for her effort.
• Sebastian immediately decides that he's going to drop the water balloon from the top of the Stormester house, rather than using the lift device. He then recalls having seen some hay, so fetches that and uses it to create a large cushioned area on the ground. Standing on top of the house, he successfully drops the balloon on the hay, and it remains undamaged. He then has a second go, this time standing on the low wall that runs around the roof of the house, giving himself a couple more feet in height. This attempt is also successful, and the height of the balloon when released is measured at 7.52m, just slightly higher than the lift device was able to reach. Sebastian thus earns first place in the task.
• Martin for some reason decides that he is going to untie the knot in the neck of the balloon, and drink the water from it, apparently arguing that drinking the water is not 'removing' it (this argument apparently doesn't translate well to English). The rest of his plan is unclear, but this is somewhat irrelevant anyway, since he merely succeeds in bursting the balloon with a wooden skewer he finds after failing to untie the knot, and has to walk away without having even attempted to drop it from any height. Unsurpringly, he is awarded zero points for his attempt.
• Eva for some reason initially ignores the lift device that has been made available to her, and instead decides to climb up onto the roof of the shed and drop it from there herself. She drops the balloon into a bucket full of water, to cushion its impact, and the plan works. She then realises that the lift provided might actually get the balloon as high as the house, so decides to have another go using that. To protect the balloon, she places it inside the yellow hard hat she has been wearing. She then has Mark crank the lift up to a height where she can still just about reach the balloon, standing on tiptoes, on top of a plastic sled (which is probably lower than the position she was previously in, on top of the shed). From there, she manually lets the balloon and hard hat fall towards the bucket full of water, but the balloon ends up hitting the patio and bursting. Lasse accepts Eva's first attempt, though, and she is awarded fourth place for her effort.
• Simon spots the loophole in the task, noting that the task does not specify that the balloon must fall the greatest distance - only that it must be dropped from the greatest height. He therefore puts the balloon on the lift device, slings a hammock immediately below the release doors, and has Mark crank the device to its full height. He is thus able to drop the balloon from 7.5m without any danger of it being damaged. He therefore earns second place in the task.