Stuff You Should Know - How SuperBalls Work

Episode Date: May 31, 2016

You can thank Wham-O's SuperBall for inspiring the name of the NFL's Big Game (buh) and you can thank the fear and the Soviet launch of Sputnik aroused in America for the invention of SuperBall! Learn the history and physics of this bouncy legend. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there.

We were just bouncing off the walls here. Uh, I'm sick, I'm not bouncing anywhere. I'm bouncing to the doctor. How are you? Right after this. What you got, the funk? I got the chests. I got the chests.

Your kid's not even in preschool yet. I'm not sick because I hurt. Well, why'd you get sick? You know, people get sick from other things. I thought, no, I thought once you had a kid, like that's the only way you got sick. No, I don't know what it is, man. I went camping the other night, it was cold.

That's what it is. But, I don't know. You got a wood fungus. I didn't treat myself like I should have on that camping trip either. Oh yeah? No, I'm saying. No.

I wasn't, you know, going jogging and drinking juice. I got to. You're eating chocolate bars? No, not chocolate. I got into the whiskey though. I didn't help things out. I see. Not on a cold night.

It's been cold here recently, it's weird. Yeah. I mean, like, cold, and it's mid-May. It's unusual. Yes. Global warming. So Chuck, have you ever heard of the NFL's big game? Yeah.

Yeah. The SB? Yeah. Can we even say that? I don't think so. All right. So the big game, actually, it sounds a lot like Super Ball. Yeah.

Which is what we're talking about. There's no, that's actually a thing. The reason why is because it's named after the Super Ball. Did you know that? Yeah, I did not. And I thought this was a little dubious, and the story still seems fishy to me, but I'll buy it. So a guy named Lamar Hunt, right?

Yeah. He founded the Dallas Texans, I think, is what they originally called, but they went on to become the Kansas City Chiefs. Yeah. And he founded this team because he couldn't get an NFL franchise in Dallas, so he just founded his own league as well.

And he created the AFL, the American Football League. That's crazy, because Dallas is such a football town. Yeah. I don't think they had a problem with Dallas. I think they had just a problem maybe with this guy. Who knows? But he was not the type to just take things lying down. Instead, he went and founded a different football league,

a rival one, right? And so as time progressed, they tried to get the NFL and the AFL integrated and to smooth the transition, they decided that they would have a year-end championship where the best team from the NFL would play the best team from the AFL, and they couldn't figure out what to call it.

And apparently at one of the meetings, Lamar Hunt said, how about the big game? That's not what he said. He said the SB. Right. Because my kid's been playing with this super ball at home. Yeah. And why not name the final football game of the season

after this toy that has nothing to do with it? That's right. And so all the guys were like, well, we're ready to go to the gentleman's club and eat some steak, so fine. We'll go with that. And apparently later on, Lamar Hunt said, he said in a quote in 1970,

I guess it is a little corny, but it looks like we're stuck with it. Yeah. So no one really likes it. They didn't use it for the first big game. No, didn't they call it like the ultimate bowl or something? No, I think it was just the AFL-NFL championship or something.

And then by year three, they said, I guess we need to have something more catchy. But all that because of the super ball, a little child's toy that everybody went crazy for. Yeah. In 19, I think starting in 1965. Yes, and we can just file this in the bucket with the slinky and silly putty.

And Barbie. Barbie and Play-Doh, did we do that one? Yes. Or did we just sit around and eat it? I think we did both. Okay, yeah. Yeah, what are we gonna call these? Pop culture of the 1950s and 60s.

Okay. Did we do the Frisbee or the Hula Hoop? We did the Hula Hoop. Yeah. Yeah, we did. And we did the Boomerang. That's more a weapon than a toy. Yeah.

Boy, it's getting harder and harder to remember which ones we've done. That's old age. Yeah. Well, it's our, what's the word? 800 something. Our prolific nature. Right.

Which is really not that much. It's just two a week over the years adds up. Well, it's prolific. Yeah, but it's not like we're recording 12 episodes a week or anything. That's prolific. That's insane. This is just regular, like taxes and death.

Do you know what would happen to us if we recorded 12 episodes a week? Yeah. Oh, well, I do. I would quit. It would be the final 12. Yeah. So, all right, let's go back in time.

Should we hop in the old Wayback machine? Yes. Let's go back to the Cold War and the Space Race, which we've talked about quite a lot. We had an episode of it. Yeah. And the United States feeling like Russia got up Sputnik and, or I guess it was the Soviet Union.

Yeah. Got up Sputnik and we're in big trouble because they did this before us and we're all scared in the United States that we're not competing like we should. Yeah. So, I was reading about it and I was reading, it's really hard to overstate the effect

that Sputnik had on the U.S. Because post-war America was all like, look at this gadget, look at this toy, make your life comfortable, get fat, and sit around in your lazy boy chair. Yeah, that little satellite came along and disrupted all that good stuff. Like America woke up and Stephen King actually said

that Sputnik instilled in him the dread that informed the work for the rest of his life. It was all based on Sputnik. Really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it had a lot of really far-reaching effects, but one of them was that America said,

scientists, get you to work. Yeah, get off your butts. Yeah. Because you're not doing anything. Yeah. You're sitting around playing P-Knuckle and so a guy named, well they did, a lot of work actually and they took it very seriously.

And this one dude, his name was Norman Stingley. He worked for a company called Bettis Rubber in suburban LA in Whittier, California and he was a scientist and he said, you know what? Well, we should caveat this with, if you work for a company like that as a scientist, you know going in, you sign away your life rights.

Yeah. And basically say that anything I create under your employee and even if I'm at home tinkering around. In my spare time. Yeah, with stuff that I learned from work, then you, well it depends on your contract. You either own it or you have first-rider refusal for it. The company does.

Yeah. Right. And I get, I have the impression that with Bettis, the company that Stingley worked for, they had first-rider refusal. Absolutely. So he began working on some stuff on his own for fun. And in 1965, he compressed into a ball this gooey substance

and said, hey, this is pretty neat. This little synthetic rubber ball actually bounces quite a bit more than any ball I've ever seen before. And I might be onto something. By Lord, it's still bouncing. That's right. And bouncing and bouncing. Unless I throw it too hard.

And then it just comes apart. Yeah, which is not good. No, no, the earliest incarnation of the super ball would just disintegrate when it hit the ground too hard. And that's actually Stingley said, okay, I gotta take this to my employer. You know what, I'll hand it to him. I would have totally tried to like,

you know, I would set up a shell company. I would create a false person with the fake social security number. Like Jackie Chan. What? He's like the one person who's been outed so far in the Panama Papers. Oh, really?

Jackie Chan. No way. What'd he do? He hid money that he overtaxes in offshore shell companies. Wow. I haven't been keeping up with that lately. It's been a bit of a bust, but I also have the impression

that a bunch more stuff is coming. Well, hey, if they got Jackie Chan, then it was all worthwhile. But that's what they got was poor Jackie Chan. He's probably looking around like, what, really? Just me? Yeah. He's like, what about Wesley Snipes?

Wesley Snipes is like, they already got me. Yeah. I'm doing Samsung commercials now. So is he really? Yeah, there's a really great Samsung commercial. It's got all these like random stars and he's one of them. And he's like kind of making fun of himself a little bit. Boy, I bet he would love to hear that.

He's random star number four. Yeah. All right, so he went to Betis and like a good dude said, I've made this thing. Let me show it to you. You have first rider refusal. And they said, no, that thing kind of stinks. It bounces and it's kind of neat,

but I threw it hard and it broke. Yeah, what kid's gonna want this? No kid could love you and they spit on it. I wonder what the rules are though with, like I wonder if you could take a cruddy version, you know, a little bit of like a shell game. Hmm. Take a poor version and say, would you want this?

And then make it better afterward, after they refuse it. I guess so. You know? You should do a whole episode in defrauding your employer. Well, I mean, that's sort of what ended up happening. Of course, it wasn't on purpose, but he then took it to the people that made the most sense in the world,

the chiefs at WAMO. And where else would he take it? I mean, these dudes, Dick Nure and Arthur Mellon. Arthur Spud Mellon. Often confused with Larry Bud Mellon. Or Spud Webb. Yeah. I stood in line to meet him when I was a kid.

Bud Mellon? No, Spud Webb. I could see that. Yeah, he was a big deal back then. Well, I had a knack for standing in line for meet and greet, autograph sessions. Who else? Brett Butler, the baseball player.

Bob Gibson, the baseball player. Brett Butler. Dominique. Okay, yes sir. And Cheap Trick. The baseball player. Yeah, I went to the record bar when I was like 12 and stood in line to get my album autographed.

Yeah, like a 12-year-old fanboy does. Nice. And congratulations to Cheap Trick, by the way, for finally being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. This just happened this year, huh? Just happened. Crazy.

Yep. It's Rock and Roll's greatest tragedy that it took this long. Agreed, long overdue. So where was I? Look at the WAMO and these dudes had made a mint selling the Hula Hoop and were they, they were the Frisbee.

Yeah. But not the Slinky. No, I think the Slinky was its own company. No, I think so too. That's another one we did too. Yeah. That's a good one. So they said this is kind of neat,

but it doesn't work so great, so get to work on it. And he did. You want to take a break and talk about it some more? Ooh, that's a nice cliffhanger. Thanks. I'll see you in a minute. All right, so you said, the last thing you said was knockoff. Knockoff.

And that means that someone said, hey, this thing is neat. And while there's a patent on that particular process to create that particular ball, you can't stop me from creating a bouncy ball of my own. Right. Like MDMA is illegal, but MDMA plus ZPT, there's no law against that. Same principle.

I don't think that's true. I think it is. Oh yeah? All right. So it's like you can just take something and adjust to add like a covalent bond or something like that, and it's still practically the same stuff. But on paper, it's not the same thing.

Because if you go look at the Zektron patent, you're going to see exactly the chemical description for it. And if you have something that's even just slightly different from it, it technically is not the same thing. It's like vanilla ice adding the extra base note to under pressure. Did he add an extra note? Yeah, under pressure is doom, doom, doom, doom, doom.

Right, vanilla ice is doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. I've never noticed that. Yeah, that was his whole deal. That's how he tried to get out of. I thought it was all like music sampling was music sampling. He tried to pretend like it was different by adding a beat. Yes, and I don't remember the result if he that either got him off or people said, you jerk.

I think people said you jerk whether he was legally on the hook or not. And we'll get 300 emails explaining it all to us. Maybe from Vanilla Ice himself. He has like a home renovation show now where he flips houses. I've seen it. Have you? I'm aware of it.

No, I've never watched it. No, I've watched like a couple of full episodes. What did you think? Well, I mean, I like the Home Reno shows, which is why I watched it, not because I was a vanilla ice fan. Gotcha. So I was just curious. And it wasn't, it was kind of like all the rest.

It was nothing different because it was him. So he's not like a larger than life personality or anything. It's not like a flavor-flav, Home Reno show. No, he was just sort of normal. And he didn't like, you know, they didn't make it super. He didn't like show up to this site and say, hey, stop. Collaborate and listen, everyone. That would have been really cheesy.

That is all I would say if I were him. But you know, he was vanilla ice. He's like, we're going to make this pool so fly, like you're not going to believe it. It's going to be dope. All right, so let's get back to the knock-offs. People started making these things. Obviously it's going to put a dent because they

were a little bit cheaper. Yeah, by like 75%. Yeah. And you get out of a gum machine like super easily. And you know, back in the 1960s, if a parent could pay a quarter for something or a dollar for something, they would probably, you know, pick the cheaper one. Parents never change.

My parents would have. Parents just don't understand. Yeah, I used to wear Knights of the Round Table clothes. Do you remember those? The polo knock-off? Yeah. My mom would be like, you can't even tell it's a flag. I'd be like, everybody can tell it's a flag instead of the

polo club. I wore those. I had the knock-off that wasn't the eyes-eye alligator. It was a gecko. I remember that. Yeah. I'm just kidding. Well, you got me on that one.

Oh, maybe there was. I don't know. Yeah, there was definitely an eyes-eye knock-off. Oh, yeah, there was. But I don't think it was a lizard. Well, was it? Was it a dragon? I do remember.

I totally remember an eyes-eye knock-off. The dragon, though, I think was its own cool thing. Maybe. All I know is that I didn't buy those. What I would get was the polo that the collar was sewn wrong or something. Oh, so you get the real polo, but it was like a, what did they call them, remnants or?

Something like factory defects? Yeah, factory defects. There was a place, a store that sold them, and we were there a lot. I got ones that were just fine. They were just total knock-offs. Which is better, I wonder, as a developing kid? Because what kid's going to be like?

Your collar's just slightly mistitched. I think the factory defects are better. Were kids like, Josh is poor. He's wearing a knight's t-shirt. Knight's of the Round Table. But I could also be like, so are you. None of us were wearing polo stuff. We were all wearing knight's of the round table.

I got you. So it didn't matter. So the Superball knock-offs put a big dent. And they were, like I said, usually a little bit smaller. The regular Superball is 1.875 inches. And by comparison, you've ever held a racquetball that's about 2.25 inches. Oh, yeah, OK.

Little smaller than a racquetball. Oh, you got it? I like the plum comparison, because it was also the color of a plum. Yeah, it was dark, purple or black, right? Right. And it said, made with amazing Zektron. Yeah, which was a big draw.

So let's talk about how cool this thing was. It wasn't just a bouncy ball. And we keep saying was. They're still around. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, at the time when people were all aware of Superballs. Like, even Jerry was like, I don't know what that is. Do you know what it is yet?

Is it ring a bell? She just made her fingers in the shape of a circle. A plum, plum size. Little smaller than a racquetball. The cool thing about these, well, there's a lot of cool things, but one thing is how high it would bounce. It would bounce back. They would claim a resilience of 90%.

So if you just drop it from 12 inches onto something hard, like a desk, it would bounce back 10.8 inches. Then on the second bounce, 9.72. Third bounce, 8.75 on down, which is remarkable. It is. It had a high coefficient of restitution. That's right. And it would conserve its elastic energy, which is basically

like the amount of kinetic energy that's preserved once an object is deformed and then reforms back to its original shape. Yeah, because when it hits that desk, if you took a snapshot of that or a slow motion, high speed shot, it would flatten out. Right, it does a little bit, for sure. And when it flattens out, the reason it doesn't have 100% coefficient of restitution or what was it called?

Resilience? Yeah, or why it doesn't have 100% is because when it drops, when it deforms and hits a surface, a little bit of heat energy is released as it deforms. Yeah. So there's a little bit of energy loss, 10% energy loss every time it strikes a surface. Yeah, like when we did this episode recently on crumple

zones, if something hit something else, there's going to be a loss of energy. And in this case, it was lost as heat, like you said. But because it's so elastic, it retains a lot of its kinetic energy, like a bowling ball. When you drop it, it might bounce a little bit. It retains a tad bit of kinetic energy, but it just places it pretty quickly, so it might bounce like just an inch

and then now a quarter inch and then nothing. Yeah, like the one drunk guy at the bowling alley that throws it like 15 feet down the lane before it hits the floor. It'll usually bounce a little like one time. You can also do that if you're not drunk, I can tell you. Oh, yeah? What's the purpose there? I don't get it.

I've never got that. What? Swinging the bowling ball down that far. It's just totally accidental. Oh, OK. For me, it's always been accidental. Oh, I thought it was like, watch this. Oh, well, yeah, then you're just a drunk guy.

OK, but you like it. Who's a jerk? You need to go home. Your thumb gets stuck. Yeah, or something like that, or just forget to release at the right moment, that kind of thing. And it just goes up and then, yeah. We're not good bowlers.

I think that's a better way to put it. I've had a couple of good games in my life. I actually took a bowling class in seventh grade or eighth grade. Yeah, I did too. That's when I got hooked on Starburst. Oh, really? Yeah, there's this vending machine in it. The Starburst just looked perfect in it.

And every time I would just buy Starburst, and then I'd go back and buy more Starburst. So you would go to the bowling alley for the class? Dude, our bowling class was in the gym. Oh, really? They would just set up bowling pins and put tape down on the floor. It was terrible.

Everybody's bowling in their factory defect polo shirts and eyes-eyed knockoffs. And you had to take turns setting up the pins by hand. No, we went to Southwick Lanes in Toledo. Oh, wow. That's crazy. Had a vending machine with Starburst. Kids sneaking beer and stuff?

Nice. No, they didn't. We were good kids. That's good. At least at that age. Good Toledo kids. Toledans. Toledians?

Toledo Whideans. What? I'm just kidding. Oh, Toledo. Toledo Zoans. You're just making stuff up. Toledoans, I think, is what they're called. They're going to take back your key to the city.

I never got that. That guy gave up. I don't know how he's doing. There's a guy, everybody, I guess we can let you in on this private conversation right now. There is a guy who was an early fan of stuff you should know who decided that it was his mission to see to it that I got the key to the city of Toledo.

I thought that was wonderful. He really tried. Yeah, I mean, yeah, he was a nice guy for sure. But he would harass the congresswoman, Marcy Captor, who is a former Toledo mayor, and everybody he could. He really tried. Didn't happen.

You need someone higher up in the chain to be a fan? Yeah, but hats off to that guy. He was nice. I don't remember his name, but he was a good guy. Heck yeah. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show HeyDude,

bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars,

friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so should we talk a little bit

about the Polybutad DNA? How'd you say it? Polybutadiene. Polybutadiene. So those are three things. The Bute, B-U-T, four-part carbon chain, E-N-E, double bond, D-I-2. So butadiene by itself is just a compound

with four carbon chain double helix, two double bonds. Right. Do people care? It's really do. There's some chemist guy out there who's like, yeah. No, I mean, super balls are all over science class. Oh, yeah, they really are. And not just because they are amazing chemically,

or they're neat at least chemically. I don't know. I'm impressed by it, right? Sure. But also the physics of them, not just their coefficient of restitution and their elasticity, but also they have another coefficient of friction. Yeah, this is pretty cool.

It's totally different than their elasticity. They have a surface that basically grips whatever surface or object it's thrown onto. And it grips it so hard that the surface can spin it a different way. So if you throw a super ball with some backspin at an angle, it will basically hit the ground and spin back toward you. It changes its spin because there's so much friction.

Yeah, and if you get a super ball and you are in a room with nothing breakable and you start spinning and bouncing that thing, you never know where it's going to go. Never know. Because not only does it have a vertical bounce, it has equally good horizontal bounce as well. It's just a neat little thing.

And that's it. That is it? I think that's it. You got anything else? No, you've seen one in physics class. If you have a fun professor, you've probably bought a super ball in there and taught you things. Right.

And if you don't, there's plenty of videos on YouTube that you can watch. So hats off to Norman Stingley. Thank you, Norman, for the super ball. If you want to know more about super balls, you can type that word in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for Listener Mail.

I'm going to call this Dark Meat. Hey, guys. Love the podcast? You probably got 100 emails about this. Actually, David Hill, we got one from you. I just finished listening to the true stories of survival cannibalism. And you guys explained the difference

between dark and white meat is the amount of blood vessels. Not true. All muscles require the same blood supply for respiration and nutrition. Just so you know, the main reason for the color differences is in the content of myoglobin. Myoglobin is a richly pigmented protein that is used to store oxygen in cells.

The more myoglobin, the darker, redder the meat will appear. Red meat is muscle fibers that are used or were used for long endurance activities and are classified as slow twitch muscle fibers. They need a constant supply of oxygen to keep up their constant activity, so they have higher myoglobin concentration than white meat. White meat, on the other hand, is comprised of fast twitch

fibers. These are used for quick burst of energy, followed by a moment of rest, like a flapping of a wing. Best to you, David Hill. Thanks a lot, David. That's how we like our correction. Civil to the point. What did we get wrong?

I don't remember. That was because of more blood vessels. Oh, OK. In the meat and the muscle. I see. We have it. Well, thanks, David. If you want to correct us, you can send us an email,

the stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. You can also hang out with us on social media at S-Y-S-K podcast on Twitter and S-Y-S-K podcast on Instagram. You can hang out with us at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And as always, hang out with us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast,

and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.