A Group of Reed College Students May Have Created the World’s Biggest Piece of Chalk

In January, a group of students at Reed College set out on a mission sure to impress elementary school teachers and hopscotch aficionados everywhere—to create the largest stick of chalk in history.

They may have succeeded.

The behemoth stands just over 6 feet tall and measures 24 inches wide. It was measured by official surveyors on March 1, and while the students have not yet heard back with confirmation that it made The Guinness Book of World Records, it probably will—the current record was set in 2010 by Pittsburgh high schoolers, with a stick measuring a puny 5-foot-11 and 23 inches wide.

The students started the chalk project with the intent of entering it in Paideia, Reed’s “annual festival of learning.” It was made by rapidly filling a ginormous, cylindrical tube with water and plaster.

If the stick does prove to be record-breaking, the next challenge will be getting it out of the basement where it was made, since it probably weighs over 1,000 pounds.

“We’ve talked about cutting it into pieces,” Lorenzo Barrar, a physics major and one of the students who helped make the big chalk, told Reed Magazine. “We might also work it onto some car jacks, put it on a dolly, and get it into the elevator. Or possibly just try to lug it upstairs.”