Extreme Engineering

The truck pulled away. Suddenly, knots appeared in Johnson’s section of rope. He pulled the excess down the walkway to inspect it. As another set of headlights swept across the scene, his attention moved frantically from tangle to tangle.

The car passed. “Rope’s in?” the skinny guy asked, moving through a memorized punchlist. Ten seconds went by. Thirty. Tasks finished, everyone watched Johnson. Finally, he stood up. “Rope’s in!”

The car was rigged and ready to go, but there was no sense of relief. The students kept a wary eye on the roadway. Four of them grabbed a corner of the Beetle and lifted it to the guardrail. It teetered, then slid over with a groan. The belay cinch whined as Johnson gently played out rope. But when it finally reached bottom, something wasn’t right, and faces became anxious. “Rope’s open?” called someone. He was asking whether the end of the rope was unhooked, ready to be pulled through the carabiner and up the other side. “Rope’s open,” came the reply.

But the rope was caught somewhere on the car and wouldn’t budge. The whole crew converged at the railing, leaning out to see what was wrong. Rather than hanging level, the car was at a wild angle. But Johnson knew they were out of time. “OK, cut rope, cut rope,” he cried, and one of the crew hacked at the line with a pen knife, tossing the rest over the top of the rail. “Somebody get on the phone—call for pickup,” Johnson commanded. They crossed over to the southbound lane, and five minutes and 28 seconds after they had arrived, they were mere onlookers, pedestrians, and nothing could touch them.

THE POSTMORTEM

Two hours later, driving through Stanley Park, looking for their handiwork in the predawn, the team listened as an AM radio station did the morning traffic: “On the Lions Gate this morning, you’re going to have to look out for a disabled car—under the bridge.” Johnson looked satisfied. The caravan stopped at a scenic overlook. Laughing and jostling, they could just make out the blinking LED they had attached to the side. An older man in a bike helmet pedaled by in the gray light and called out, in a shy but conspiratorial tone, “UBC engineers!” The group cheered.

The high spirits continued as the perpetrators, joined now by perhaps a dozen friends, filled a diner nearby. In a few hours, the incident received coverage from Reuters (“Engineered to Bug You?”), the Vancouver Province (“Car Drop Scores”) and international television. Rumors flew that the police might look for suspects on the bridge’s security footage. (The team logistics expert had warned members to alter their license plates with duct tape.) All day Monday, detectives questioned any student who came to Stanley Park to view the car, but by the time summer break rolled around, the police hadn’t made any arrests.

After years of post-9/11 security and paranoia, I was impressed to see someone engineer a little creative mischief for the hell of it. And in the end, the Beetle-hanging wasn’t just a stunt. It was a chance to learn the essentials of problem-solving—simplicity, planning, skill—by causing problems.

Of course, the plan didn’t entirely work out. On the descent, the cable caught the rear fender, yanking the vehicle upright. Then a rope pinched somewhere, and they had to abandon it rather than remove it without a trace, the stunt’s planned masterstroke. If they had it to do all over again, Johnson says, they would place the cable at the same spot but drop the Beetle at a greater distance from the hook so that while the shell descended, the cable would remain taut the whole time. And that’s when I realized that his being so bothered by the details is what will make Johnson a good engineer: In his moment of triumph, he was already refining his work. “It’s not exactly what we imagined,” he sighed. “I wanted it to be perfect.”

UBC isn't the only school known for its merry pranksters. Check out the full roundup of great collegiate capers at popsci.com/prank

Bob Parks’s last article for PopSci, about Darpa’s autonomous-car challenge, appeared in the May 2007 issue.