News and Experiments

Gorilla Dinner Weekend (18th - 21st March 2022)

Newnham College provided the setting for this year's annual dinner. It was preceded by four successful gorilla launches fired by society members during the day. The speeches this year came from General Mark Carleton-Smith as distinguished guest, Thomas Hooley as past Head Scientist and Greg Chu as current Head Scientist. The handgun band managed to shoot a baby gorilla over the entire length of one table and, as two of them had never handled a gorilla pistol until this year, should be congratulated for their performance.

16th March 2022

In our final launch of the term, we decided to go out with a bang, packing the cannon with 17kg of C-4. Gorilla G-3965 "Big Frank" was picked for this experiment for his large mass. Unfortunately the extra explosives meant the protective plate wouldn't fit in the cannon, however a record range of 1,211m was attained by G-3965's left eyeball. A spectacular launch, well done to all involved.

9th March 2022

This firing, we decided to test whether injecting G-3964 "Punchy Jane" with Eflornithine prior to launch would relax the test subject sufficiently to allow safe loading without the use of strong sedatives. Initial results were promising, however upon impact G-3964 entered a frenzied state, escaping the test ground and indiscriminately attacking civilians. Apologies to all the residents of Mill Lane who were affected by this test.

2nd March 2022

This experiment was sponsored by the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers (RABDF) - the recent outbreak of Mad Cow Disease in Coe Fen resulted in an excess of cows waiting to be culled. We were happy to oblige, with test subject C-0001 "Totally A Gorilla" doing substantial damage to the old milk van kindly donated.

23rd Feburary 2022

Looking back at our ~20 years of surviving records, we came to the conclusion that the society has never tried launching a gorilla straight upwards before. After propping the cannon up with the help of G-3876 "Handy Andy", G-3963 "Flying Ace XVII" was fired 40 metres into the air, however precise altitude measures were stymied by the attending scientists scattering when it was clear G-3963 was slightly off course from the intended "instant reload" trajectory. The landing unfortunately resulted in significant damage to the cannon rim as G-3963 was violently bisected. A very productive experiment, congratulations to those involved.