<--Previous page
"We actually started working on this over the winter," says Purdue agronomist
Bob Nielsen. "The Farm Progress Show seemed like the perfect opportunity
to create a maze utilizing global positioning technology."
It's the same technology that allows owners of expensive cars to punch
a few buttons on the dashboard and always know where they are, thereby
rendering obsolete spouses with roadmaps.
The Global Positioning System is a constellation of 24 satellites and
ground stations used for navigation and precise geodetic position measurements.
The U.S. Department of Defense operates the satellites, and measurements
are accurate to within a meter for any place on earth.
That is more than accurate enough for the maze masters to con=vert
designer Sharon Katz's intricate scheme of the Boilermaker Special into
five acres of delightfully frustrating left turns, right turns, dead
ends and backtracks amid 10- to 12-foot-tall stalks of corn.
Katz, who works in the Department of Agricultural Communication, scoured
the Internet and library books before settling on the design of the
Boilermaker Special. She even "signed" her work of art by integrating
a lower case "d" in the lower right corner of the maze (it's part of
her childhood nickname).
Purdue specialists in agronomy and agricultural and biological engineering
used global positioning technology and field mapping software to display
a digitized copy of the maze design. They marked the coordinates of
the four corners of Smit's field for their mapping software.
"Once we did that, we simply were able to lay the image of the maze
over the outline of the five-acre field," Nielsen says. "From there,
we could take that image with our hand-held mapping software and actually
see the image on our computer in the field. A cursor told us exactly
which direction we had to go with our cans of spray paint and stakes
to map out the field in late May."
With a pair of lawn mowers, workers then cut out the patterns in the
corn on June 19.
Next page -->
A-mazing field awaits show visitors
