It was Senior year. Last football year of the season. The robotics team was firing t-shirts into the stands with our automated robotic t-shirt cannon led by myself and WeirdAl. It was a dark, cold and windy night. Last 2 minutes of the game and we were down by 20+ points (our school wasn't known for sports). With so little time and so many t-shirts, we decided to do a rapid assault of t-shirts on the crowd. Doing our best to lay waste to our current supply of ammo that would be useless in just a short time.
As we proceeded to fire t-shirts 5-10 a minute. We had successfully turned the crowds attention to us instead of the horrific football massacre which resulted in a uproar of fans cheering "OVER HERE! SHOOT OVER HERE!" "BA BOOB, BA BOOM" went the cannon. It was great, the t-shirts were flying, the crowd was cheering, and we had almost ran out of ammo. But with seconds remaining, I noticed we had 3 shirts left. Hurriedly I filled the cannon with all three, and raised the barrel as high as it would go. It was go time. I counted down in synchronization with the game clock. 3-2-1 FIRE! BA..."wait, what happened" we thought to ourselves. ...BOOOOOOOM! The t-shirts flew out of the cannon, past the fans and over the bleachers, into the parking lot behind them. A second later, the pvc barrel EXPLODED! Shrapnel flying everywhere. Tiny, harmless pieces but shrapnel nonetheless.
Unaware of this at the time, but the constant firing of the cannon led to compression and expansion of the pvc. The pvc used was not regulated for pressure (as it is a special order from Home Depot and not readily available), and the frequent expansion of the pvc caused it to freeze and on the last firing of the cannon, it gave.
Although I was not the first to break the cannon, my behind was thoroughly chewed out and I was never allowed to fire it again. No hard feelings, but as a result of this event (and a few others that happened in my presence) if anything was to go wrong in robotics, even if I wasn't at school, I am blamed for it. I guess I deserve it.
In case you haven't seen the cannon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BkoIaFOdqc