SCRANTON -- Hundreds of students, teachers, and staff hoped to pop their way into the record books Friday morning in Scranton.
The sound of bubble wrap popping filled the gym at West Scranton Intermediate School. It was an attempt to set a Guinness world record, and learn a lesson in teamwork.
It was a pop palooza: hundreds of hands hard at work pop, pop, popping away on bubble wrap in the gym at West Scranton Intermediate.
It was two minutes of nonstop popping, by more than 700 people, all in an effort to break a Guinness world record.
And for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders what else is bubble wrap for except to "pop it!"
"Yeah, bubble wrap is fun!"
"I don't know of anyone who doesn't like to pop bubble wrap so this is fun, it's funky, it's quirky, the kids love it, it's easy to do, you can't help but smile," said teacher Lisa Michaels.
Getting to the popping took a lot of preparation and following a lot of Guinness rules. The popping was the easy part.
"When I first did my proposal, I had no idea the amount of details needed to get an official record going," Michaels said.
First came the stewards, business people in the community who had to monitor it all.
Then came the students, teachers, and staff; hundreds of them had to be corralled into specific rows to make sure the record keeping was done correctly.
A business donated two thousand feet of the all-important bubble wrap to be handed out to all the poppers.
Then came the fun part. But why do all this popping??
This was linked with raising $3,500 for St. Joseph's Center and teaching a lesson in teamwork.
They had to beat 532 people popping and with 700 plus here, they're sure they did.
"Our teacher, Ms. Michaels, was planning this for a year and it's really exciting that it all came through and everyone got involved. it was great!" said eighth grader Lainey Lavelle.
"Even though we haven't heard from Guinness yet and won't for a couple weeks, I feel we've already succeeded already," said Michaels. "I'm ecstatic, I couldn't be happier, I'm so proud of everyone."