Maximum Splat! Baker Piano Drop Hits the Mark

Ah, spring rituals. At MIT, the annual Baker House Piano Drop is a sure sign of buds in bloom and the semester winding down. This year, some 200 students gathered April 23 for the plunge of a 500-pound piano to commemorate course Drop Date on the academic calendar.

Maximum impact comes when the piano hits an object of choice below. Last year, alas, the piano missed its target-another derelict piano. This year the aim was true-the piano smashed a giant sculpture of a Coke bottle fashioned from plastic buckets. The Tech, which published photos, reported that it successfuly "exploded into shards."

Piano lovers relax! This year's victim piano, as past year's, was unusable. The donor, a New Hamshire resident, offered a Huntington piano with a broken frame, missing keys, and other signs of demise. "We don't use functional pianos," says an event organizer, Alex R. Camacho ’10.