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For the Price is Right game, see Super Ball!!SuperBall (originally Super Ball) is a toy manufactured by Wham-O. It is an extremely elastic ball made of Zectron, which contains the synthetic rubber polymer polybutadiene vulcanized with sulfur at a temperature of 165 degrees Celsius and at a pressure of 80 atmospheres. The Super Ball has an amazingly high coefficient of restitution.
Trivia The Super Ball was invented in 1965 by California chemist Norman Stingley in his spare time. Stingley took the idea to Wham-O after his employer, Bettis Rubber Company, turned it down. When an original Wham-O Super Ball was dropped from shoulder level onto a hard surface such as concrete, it rebounded to about 90% of the original height. Wham-O once constructed a giant Super Ball that was dropped from a 23rd-story window in Australia. The ball bounced back up 15 stories, then landed on a parked car. When Lamar Hunt saw his daughter playing with a Super Ball, it inspired him to name the new AFL-NFL Championship Game the Super Bowl. The toy was parodied in Saturday Night Live's Happy Fun Ball sketch. Physicist and arms control advocate Richard Garwin studied the scientific reasons for the way Super Balls bounce. "Superball" has also become something of a generic name for any similarly high-bouncing rubber ball. The material is sometimes used in the illegal corking of baseball bats. Reference Patent | ||||||||
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