May 31, 2016 • 26 mins
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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. Just's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there.
We're just bouncing off the walls here. I'm sick. I'm
not bouncing anywhere. I'm bouncing to the doctor. Are you
(00:23):
right after this? You got the funk, I got the chests,
got the chests. Your kids not even in preschool yet.
I'm not sick because I hurt. Well, why did you
get sick? You know, people get sick from other things.
I thought once you had a kid, like that's the
only way you got sick. Now, I don't know what
it is. Man camping in the night, it was cold,
(00:45):
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, you know
what I'm saying. No, that wasn't you know, going jogging
and drinking juice. 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
(01:07):
here recently, it's weird. I mean like cold and it's
mid May. It's unusual, it's global warming. So, Chuck, have
you ever heard of the NFL's Big Game? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
can we even say that? I don't think so. All right,
(01:29):
uh so the Big Game? Actually it sounds a lot
like super Ball, which is what we're talking about. There's
no that's actually a thing. The reason why it 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 it seems fishy to me. But
(01:50):
so a guy named Lamar Hunt, right, he founded the
the Dallas Texans I think is what they originally called,
but they went on to become the Kansas City Chiefs.
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 a f L,
the American Football League, because Dallas is such a football town. Yeah,
(02:13):
you know, 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 of just
take things lying down. Instead, he went and founded a
different football league rival one right, And so as time progressed,
they tried to get the NFL and the a f
L uh integrated, and to smooth the transition, they decided
(02:34):
that they would have a year end championship where the
best team from the NFL would play the best team
from the a f L. 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 sbright because my kids
been playing with this Super Bowl at home, and why
(02:56):
not name a the final football game of the season
after the toy that has nothing to do with it,
that's right, And so all all the all the guys,
we're like, well, we're ready to go to the gentleman's
club and eat some steaks. So fine, we'll go with that.
And apparently later on Lamar Hunt said he said in
a quote, I guess it is a little corny, but
(03:18):
it looks like we're stuck with it, so no one
really likes it. They didn't use it for the first
big Game, No, that didn't they call it like the
Ultimate Bowl. I think it was just the a f
L NFL championship or something, and then by year three
they said, uh, I guess we need to have something
more catchy. But all that because of the super Ball,
(03:39):
a little child's toy that everybody went crazy four and
in nineteen I think starting in n yes, and we
can just file this in the bucket with the slinky
and Silly Putty and Barbie Barbie and played. Oh did
we do that one? Yes? Or did we just sit
around and eat it? I think we did? Okay? Uh yeah,
(04:02):
what were you gonna call these pop culture of the
nineteen fifties and sixties? Okay, did we did 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. Uh boy, it's getting harder and
harder to remember which once we've done as old age. Yeah, well,
(04:26):
it's it's our what's the word prolific nature, right, which
is really not that much. It's just two a week
over the year's adds up. Well, it's prolific, yeah, but
it's not like recording twelve episodes a week or anything
that's prolific. That's insane. This is just regular like taxes
(04:46):
and death. Do you know what would happen to us
if we recorded twelve episodes a week? Well, I do,
I would quit. It would be the final twelve. Uh So,
all right, let's go back in time. Should we hop
up in the the old way back machine? Yuh? Go
(05:11):
back to the Cold War and the space race, which
we've talked about quite a lot. Yeah, and the United
States feeling like Russia got up Sputnik and or I
guess it was the Soviet Union 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
(05:32):
not competing like we should. Yeah, I was reading about it.
I was reading it. Just it's really hard to overstate
the effect that Sputnik had on the US because post
war America was all like, look at this gadet, look
at this toy, make your life comfortable, get fat, and
sit around in your lazy boy chair. Right, the little
satellite came along and disrupted all that because like, America
(05:53):
woke up and um. 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. Yeah. Yeah,
I 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
(06:14):
not doing anything. Yeah. Uh, you're sitting around playing pinnuckle. Uh.
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. Um. He
worked for a company called Bettis Rubber in suburban l
A and Whittier, California. And um, he was a scientist.
(06:37):
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 and basically say that anything I create
under your employ and even if I'm at home tinkering
around in my spare time, yeah, with stuff that I like,
you know, learned from work, then you well, it depends
(07:00):
on your contract. You either on it or your first
rider refusal for it the company does, right, And I
gain have the impression that UM with Bettis the company
that Stingly worked for, Um, they had first rider refusal. Absolutely,
So he began working on some stuff on his own
for fun. Uh in the ve he compressed into a
(07:22):
ball this uh gooey substance, and um 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, and by Lord, is
still bouncing and bouncing and bouncing unless I throw it
too hard and then it just comes apart, which is
(07:44):
not good. No. No, the earliest Um, the earliest incarnation
of the super Bowl. We just disintegrate when it hit
the ground too hard. And that's actually stingly said, Okay,
I gotta take this to my employer. He's 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, yeah, with the fake social
(08:07):
Security number, like Jackie Chan. What he's like, the one
person who's been out in so far in the Panama papers?
Oh really, Jackie Chan? No way, what'd he do? He
hid money that he taxes and offshore shell companies. I
haven't been keeping up with that lately. It's been a
(08:27):
bit of a bus 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 really just me? Yeah, He's like, what
about Wesley Snipes? Wesley SIPs is like they already got me.
I'm doing Samsung commercials now? Is he really? Yeah, there's
(08:47):
a really great Samsung commercial. Let'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
start num before. Uh all right, So he went to
Bettus and, like a good dude, said I've made this thing.
Let me show it to you. Uh you first rider
refusal and they said no, that thing kind of stinks. Um,
(09:10):
it bounces and it's kind of neat, but it I
threw it hard and it broke. Yeah, what 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,
take a poor version and say, what do you want
this and then make it better afterwards after they refuse it,
(09:33):
you know, because it's 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 he then took
it to the people that made the most sense in
the world, the chiefs at Wammo, right, and where else
would he take it? I mean, these dudes dick Ner
and Arthur Melan melanur mel often confused with Larry Bud
(09:58):
Melman or spud we. Uh. Yeah, I just didn't mind
to meet him when I was a kid. Bud Mom, No,
it's Bud Web. I could see that. Yeah, I was.
He was a big deal back then, but I had
a knack for standing in line for meet and greet
autograph sessions. Uh. Brett Butler the baseball player, Bob Gibson
(10:18):
the baseball player, Dominique okay yes um. And Cheap Trick
the payer. Yeah, I went to the record bar when
I was like twelve and stood in Lyne to get
my album autographed. Yeah, like a twelve year old fan
boy does. And congratulations to Cheap Trick, by the way,
(10:38):
for finally being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame this year. Uh just happened this year? Huh
just happened? Crazy. It's rock and Roll's greatest tragedy that
it took this long agreed, long overdue. Uh so where
was I? So he took it to WAMO and these
dudes had made a mint selling the hula hoop, and
um were they? They were the frisbee, but not the slinky. No.
(11:02):
I think the slinky was its own company. I think
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. That's a nice cliffhanger, all right.
(11:37):
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. Like M d M
A is illegal, but m d M A plus ZPT
(12:02):
there's no law against that same same principle. I don't
think that's true. I think it is all right. So
it's like you can just take something and 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
(12:24):
at the Zectron patent, you're gonna see exactly the um
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 bass note to under pressure. Did he add an
extra note? Yeah? Under pressure is doom doom doom do
(12:44):
do doom, Doom doom doom doom doom do doo doom doom.
I've never noticed that. Yeah, that was this 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 how. I don't remember the result.
If he that either got him off or people said
(13:05):
you jerk. I think I think people said you jerked,
whether he was legally on the hook or not. And
we'll get three emails explaining it all to us, maybe
from Vanilla Ice himself. He has like a home renovation
show now whips Houses. I've seen it, have you? I'm
aware of it. No, I've never watched. No, I've watched
like a couple of full episodes. You well. I mean
(13:28):
I like the home RUNO shows, which is why I
watched it. Not because I was a Vanilla Ice fan.
So I was just curious and it you know, 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 Flavor home runof he was. 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
(13:49):
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. Um, but you know,
he was Vanilla Ice. He like, we're gonna make this
pool so fly, like you're not gonna believe it. It's
gonna be dope. Uh. All right, So let's get back
to the knockoffs. People started making these things obviously, it's
(14:11):
gonna put a debt because they were a little bit cheaper. Yeah,
by like yeah, and you get out of a gun
machine like super easily. And you know, back in the
nineties sixties, of a parent could pay a quarter for
something or a dollar for something, they would probably, you know,
pick the cheaper one. Parents never changed. My parents would
(14:32):
have parents just don't understand. Yeah, I used to where
um nights of the round table clothes? Do you remember those?
The Polo knockoff? 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 club I
wore this. I had the knockoff that wasn't the Eyesod alligator.
(14:55):
It was a gecko. I remember that. Yeah, I'm just kidding. Well,
you got me on that one. Maybe there was, I
don't know. Yeah, there was definitely an ISA knockoff. 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 ISA knockoff. The dragon though, I
(15:17):
think was its own like cool thing. Maybe all I
know is that I didn't buy those. What I would
get was the the polo that the collar was sown
wrong or something. Oh, so you get like the real polo.
But it was like a what do they call them
remnants or something like you know, there's an factory defects. Yeah,
(15:38):
factory defects because there was a place, a store that
sold them, and that's we were there a lot. I
got ones. They were just fine. They were just total knockoffs,
which is better. I wonder a developed factory defected because
what kid's gonna be like your callers, just slightly misstitched.
I think the factory defects that right, Um, kids like
(16:00):
Josh is poor he's wearing a Knight's T shirt Knights
of the Round Table. But I could also be like,
so are you None of us were wearing polo stuffinitely
all wearing Knights of the Round Table, so it didn't matter.
So the super ball knockoffs, but a big dent. And uh,
they were, like I said, usually a little bit smaller.
The regular super ball um was one point eight seven
(16:23):
five inches and if by comparison, you've ever held a raccketball,
that's about two point two five inches. Oh yeah, okay,
a little smaller than rocket. You got it. I like
the plumb comparison because it was also the color of
a plum. Yeah it's dark, yeah, like purple or black, right,
and in said made with amazing zectron. Yeah, which was
(16:45):
a big you know, that was a big draw. Uh.
So let's talk about how cool this thing was. It
wasn't just a bouncy ball. And we keep saying was
there're still around? Yeah, but I mean at the time
when people were all aware of super balls, 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 made her fingers in the shape of a circle,
(17:08):
a plum plump size, a little smaller than the racket ball. Uh.
The cool thing about these well, there's a lot of
cool things, but one thing is how high it would bounce.
It had it would bounce back. They would claim a
resilience of So if you just drop it from twelve
inches onto something hard like a desk, it would bounce
(17:29):
back ten inches. Then on the second bounce nine point
seven to third bounce eight point seven five 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
(17:51):
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, you know it flat
and out right. It does a little bit, sure, and
when it flattens out. The reason it doesn't have a
hundred percent um coefficient of restitution or uh what was
it what was it called resilience, Yeah, or why it
(18:12):
doesn't have a d percent because when it drops, when
it deforms and hits a surface, it um a little
bit of heat energy is released as it deforms. Yeah,
So that so it loses there's a little bit of
energy loss, ten percent energy loss every time it strikes
a surface. Yeah, like when we did this episode recently
(18:34):
on crumple zones. Like if something hits something else, there's
gonna be a loss of energy. Uh. And in this case, um,
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 tab bit of
kinetic energy but it just places it pretty quickly, so
it might bounce like just you know, an inch and
(18:57):
then now a quarter inch and then nothing like the
one drunk guy at the bowling alley that throws it
like fifteen ft down the lane before it hits the floor. Yeah,
it'll usually bounce like one time. Right, you can also
do that if you're not drunk. I can tell you, Yeah,
what's the purpose there? I don't get it. I've never
got that. What slinging the bowling ball down that far?
(19:17):
It's just totally accidental. Okay for me, it's always been accidental.
I thought it was like watch this, Oh well, yeah,
then you're just a drunk guy, Like, who's a jerk?
You need to go home? Your thumb gets stuck, yeah,
or something like that, or just you know, forget to
release at the right moment, that kind of thing and
it just goes up. And then, yeah, we're not good bowlers.
(19:39):
I think that's a better way to put in. 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 get hooked on Starburst.
Did really Yeah, there's this vending machine in it, like
the Starburst just look perfect in it. And every time
I would just buy Starburst and then I can go
back and buy more Starburst. You would go to the
(20:00):
bowling alley for the class. Dude, are bowling? Class was
in the gym, like they would just set up bowling
pins and put tape down on the floor. Everybody's bowling
in their factory defect polo shirts and eyes I knockoffs,
and then you had to take turns setting up the
pins by hand. No, we went to like South Wake
(20:21):
Lanes and Woe that's crazy. Had a venue Michie was
Starburst kids sneaking beer and stuff. No, they didn't. We
were good kids. That's good at least at that age.
Good Toledo kids Tolden's to Ladians, Toledo white ians. What, oh,
(20:42):
Toledo owens. You're just making stuff up. Toledo pens, I
think is what they're called. They're going to take back
your key to the city. I never got that guy
gave up. I wonder how he's doing. There's a guy everybody,
I guess we can let you in on this private
conversation right right now. There's a guy who was an
early fan of stuff you should know who decided that
(21:04):
it was his mission to see to it that I
got the key to the city of Toledo. Wonderful. He
really tried, Yeah, I mean yeah, he was a nice
guy for sure, but he would harass the Congresswoman Marcy Captor,
who was a former Toledo mayor, and like everybody could
really really tried, it didn't happen. You need someone higher
(21:27):
up on 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. Yeah. Alright,
So should we talk a little bit about the Polly
Beute tad d N me how did you say it?
Polly Beuta dying polly beta dye. So those are three things.
(21:49):
The beaute beaut four part carbon chain h E N
E double bond d I too, right, So beaut beauta
dyne by itself, it's just a compound for carbon chain
double he looks two double bonds, right, Do people care? Really?
(22:13):
There's some chemists guy out there's like, yeah, no, I
mean they superballs are all over science class. Oh yeah,
they really are, and not just because they are amazing
chemically or their need at least chemically, I don't know.
I'm impressed by it, right, um, but also the physics
of them, not just their co of coefficient of UM
(22:34):
restitution and their elasticity, but also they have another UM
coefficient of friction. Yeah, this is pretty cool. It's like
totally um different than their their elasticity. They have a
surface that basically grips whatever surface or object that's thrown onto,
(22:55):
and it grips it so hard that the surface can
spin it a different way. So if you throw a
super Bowl with some backspin at an angle, it will
basically hit the ground and spin back towards you. It
changes its spin because it's there. There's so much friction. Yeah.
(23:17):
And if you get a super Bowl and you are
in a room with nothing breakable, uh, and you start
spinning and bouncing that thing, you never know where it's
gonna go. Never know because not only does it have
a high horizontal or vertical bounce, has an 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.
(23:38):
You got anything else? Now you've seen one in physics class.
If you have a fun professor, you probably bought a
Super Bowl in there and taught you things. And if
you don't, there's plenty of videos on YouTube that you
can watch. So hats off to Norman Stingly. Thank you
Norman for the Super Bowl. Uh. If you want to
(23:58):
know more about super Bowls, you can type that word
in the search bart how stuff works dot com. And
since I said search bars, time for listening. Now I'm
gonna call this dark meat. Hey, guys, web the podcast. Um,
you've probably got a hundred emails about this. Actually, David Hill,
(24:19):
we got one from you. I just finished listening to
the true stories of survival cannibalism. Uh, and you guys
explain 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 in the content
of myoglobin. My globin is a richly pigmented protein that
(24:42):
has used to store oxygen and cells. The more my globin,
the darker redder the meat will appear. Red meat is
muscle fibers that are used or were used for long
and durance activities and are classified as slow twitch muscle fibers.
They needed constant supply boxygen to keep up their constant activity,
so they have hired my I Globin concentration in white meat.
(25:02):
White beat, on the other hand, is comprised of past
which fibers. These are used for quick burst of energy
followed by a moment of breast like a flapping of
a wing. Best to you, David Hill. Thanks a that, David.
That's how we like our corrections, Sybil to the point,
what did we get wrong? I don't remember that. That
(25:22):
was because of more blood vessels. Okay, in the in
the meat, in the muscle. I see, I have it well,
Thanks David. If you want to correct us, you can
send us an email. This stuff podcast at how stuffworks
dot com. You can also hang out with us on
social media a s y SK podcast on Twitter and
(25:44):
s y sk podcast on Instagram. You can hang out
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For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
(26:05):
how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. Just's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there.
We're just bouncing off the walls here. I'm sick. I'm
not bouncing anywhere. I'm bouncing to the doctor. Are you
(00:23):
right after this? You got the funk, I got the chests,
got the chests. Your kids not even in preschool yet.
I'm not sick because I hurt. Well, why did you
get sick? You know, people get sick from other things.
I thought once you had a kid, like that's the
only way you got sick. Now, I don't know what
it is. Man camping in the night, it was cold,
(00:45):
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, you know
what I'm saying. No, that wasn't you know, going jogging
and drinking juice. 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
(01:07):
here recently, it's weird. I mean like cold and it's
mid May. It's unusual, it's global warming. So, Chuck, have
you ever heard of the NFL's Big Game? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
can we even say that? I don't think so. All right,
(01:29):
uh so the Big Game? Actually it sounds a lot
like super Ball, which is what we're talking about. There's
no that's actually a thing. The reason why it 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 it seems fishy to me. But
(01:50):
so a guy named Lamar Hunt, right, he founded the
the Dallas Texans I think is what they originally called,
but they went on to become the Kansas City Chiefs.
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 a f L,
the American Football League, because Dallas is such a football town. Yeah,
(02:13):
you know, 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 of just
take things lying down. Instead, he went and founded a
different football league rival one right, And so as time progressed,
they tried to get the NFL and the a f
L uh integrated, and to smooth the transition, they decided
(02:34):
that they would have a year end championship where the
best team from the NFL would play the best team
from the a f L. 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 sbright because my kids
been playing with this Super Bowl at home, and why
(02:56):
not name a the final football game of the season
after the toy that has nothing to do with it,
that's right, And so all all the all the guys,
we're like, well, we're ready to go to the gentleman's
club and eat some steaks. So fine, we'll go with that.
And apparently later on Lamar Hunt said he said in
a quote, I guess it is a little corny, but
(03:18):
it looks like we're stuck with it, so no one
really likes it. They didn't use it for the first
big Game, No, that didn't they call it like the
Ultimate Bowl. I think it was just the a f
L NFL championship or something, and then by year three
they said, uh, I guess we need to have something
more catchy. But all that because of the super Ball,
(03:39):
a little child's toy that everybody went crazy four and
in nineteen I think starting in n yes, and we
can just file this in the bucket with the slinky
and Silly Putty and Barbie Barbie and played. Oh did
we do that one? Yes? Or did we just sit
around and eat it? I think we did? Okay? Uh yeah,
(04:02):
what were you gonna call these pop culture of the
nineteen fifties and sixties? Okay, did we did 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. Uh boy, it's getting harder and
harder to remember which once we've done as old age. Yeah, well,
(04:26):
it's it's our what's the word prolific nature, right, which
is really not that much. It's just two a week
over the year's adds up. Well, it's prolific, yeah, but
it's not like recording twelve episodes a week or anything
that's prolific. That's insane. This is just regular like taxes
(04:46):
and death. Do you know what would happen to us
if we recorded twelve episodes a week? Well, I do,
I would quit. It would be the final twelve. Uh So,
all right, let's go back in time. Should we hop
up in the the old way back machine? Yuh? Go
(05:11):
back to the Cold War and the space race, which
we've talked about quite a lot. Yeah, and the United
States feeling like Russia got up Sputnik and or I
guess it was the Soviet Union 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
(05:32):
not competing like we should. Yeah, I was reading about it.
I was reading it. Just it's really hard to overstate
the effect that Sputnik had on the US because post
war America was all like, look at this gadet, look
at this toy, make your life comfortable, get fat, and
sit around in your lazy boy chair. Right, the little
satellite came along and disrupted all that because like, America
(05:53):
woke up and um. 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. Yeah. Yeah,
I 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
(06:14):
not doing anything. Yeah. Uh, you're sitting around playing pinnuckle. Uh.
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. Um. He
worked for a company called Bettis Rubber in suburban l
A and Whittier, California. And um, he was a scientist.
(06:37):
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 and basically say that anything I create
under your employ and even if I'm at home tinkering
around in my spare time, yeah, with stuff that I like,
you know, learned from work, then you well, it depends
(07:00):
on your contract. You either on it or your first
rider refusal for it the company does, right, And I
gain have the impression that UM with Bettis the company
that Stingly worked for, Um, they had first rider refusal. Absolutely,
So he began working on some stuff on his own
for fun. Uh in the ve he compressed into a
(07:22):
ball this uh gooey substance, and um 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, and by Lord, is
still bouncing and bouncing and bouncing unless I throw it
too hard and then it just comes apart, which is
(07:44):
not good. No. No, the earliest Um, the earliest incarnation
of the super Bowl. We just disintegrate when it hit
the ground too hard. And that's actually stingly said, Okay,
I gotta take this to my employer. He's 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, yeah, with the fake social
(08:07):
Security number, like Jackie Chan. What he's like, the one
person who's been out in so far in the Panama papers?
Oh really, Jackie Chan? No way, what'd he do? He
hid money that he taxes and offshore shell companies. I
haven't been keeping up with that lately. It's been a
(08:27):
bit of a bus 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 really just me? Yeah, He's like, what
about Wesley Snipes? Wesley SIPs is like they already got me.
I'm doing Samsung commercials now? Is he really? Yeah, there's
(08:47):
a really great Samsung commercial. Let'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
start num before. Uh all right, So he went to
Bettus and, like a good dude, said I've made this thing.
Let me show it to you. Uh you first rider
refusal and they said no, that thing kind of stinks. Um,
(09:10):
it bounces and it's kind of neat, but it I
threw it hard and it broke. Yeah, what 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,
take a poor version and say, what do you want
this and then make it better afterwards after they refuse it,
(09:33):
you know, because it's 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 he then took
it to the people that made the most sense in
the world, the chiefs at Wammo, right, and where else
would he take it? I mean, these dudes dick Ner
and Arthur Melan melanur mel often confused with Larry Bud
(09:58):
Melman or spud we. Uh. Yeah, I just didn't mind
to meet him when I was a kid. Bud Mom, No,
it's Bud Web. I could see that. Yeah, I was.
He was a big deal back then, but I had
a knack for standing in line for meet and greet
autograph sessions. Uh. Brett Butler the baseball player, Bob Gibson
(10:18):
the baseball player, Dominique okay yes um. And Cheap Trick
the payer. Yeah, I went to the record bar when
I was like twelve and stood in Lyne to get
my album autographed. Yeah, like a twelve year old fan
boy does. And congratulations to Cheap Trick, by the way,
(10:38):
for finally being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame this year. Uh just happened this year? Huh
just happened? Crazy. It's rock and Roll's greatest tragedy that
it took this long agreed, long overdue. Uh so where
was I? So he took it to WAMO and these
dudes had made a mint selling the hula hoop, and
um were they? They were the frisbee, but not the slinky. No.
(11:02):
I think the slinky was its own company. I think
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. That's a nice cliffhanger, all right.
(11:37):
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. Like M d M
A is illegal, but m d M A plus ZPT
(12:02):
there's no law against that same same principle. I don't
think that's true. I think it is all right. So
it's like you can just take something and 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
(12:24):
at the Zectron patent, you're gonna see exactly the um
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 bass note to under pressure. Did he add an
extra note? Yeah? Under pressure is doom doom doom do
(12:44):
do doom, Doom doom doom doom doom do doo doom doom.
I've never noticed that. Yeah, that was this 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 how. I don't remember the result.
If he that either got him off or people said
(13:05):
you jerk. I think I think people said you jerked,
whether he was legally on the hook or not. And
we'll get three emails explaining it all to us, maybe
from Vanilla Ice himself. He has like a home renovation
show now whips Houses. I've seen it, have you? I'm
aware of it. No, I've never watched. No, I've watched
like a couple of full episodes. You well. I mean
(13:28):
I like the home RUNO shows, which is why I
watched it. Not because I was a Vanilla Ice fan.
So I was just curious and it you know, 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 Flavor home runof he was. 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
(13:49):
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. Um, but you know,
he was Vanilla Ice. He like, we're gonna make this
pool so fly, like you're not gonna believe it. It's
gonna be dope. Uh. All right, So let's get back
to the knockoffs. People started making these things obviously, it's
(14:11):
gonna put a debt because they were a little bit cheaper. Yeah,
by like yeah, and you get out of a gun
machine like super easily. And you know, back in the
nineties sixties, of a parent could pay a quarter for
something or a dollar for something, they would probably, you know,
pick the cheaper one. Parents never changed. My parents would
(14:32):
have parents just don't understand. Yeah, I used to where
um nights of the round table clothes? Do you remember those?
The Polo knockoff? 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 club I
wore this. I had the knockoff that wasn't the Eyesod alligator.
(14:55):
It was a gecko. I remember that. Yeah, I'm just kidding. Well,
you got me on that one. Maybe there was, I
don't know. Yeah, there was definitely an ISA knockoff. 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 ISA knockoff. The dragon though, I
(15:17):
think was its own like cool thing. Maybe all I
know is that I didn't buy those. What I would
get was the the polo that the collar was sown
wrong or something. Oh, so you get like the real polo.
But it was like a what do they call them
remnants or something like you know, there's an factory defects. Yeah,
(15:38):
factory defects because there was a place, a store that
sold them, and that's we were there a lot. I
got ones. They were just fine. They were just total knockoffs,
which is better. I wonder a developed factory defected because
what kid's gonna be like your callers, just slightly misstitched.
I think the factory defects that right, Um, kids like
(16:00):
Josh is poor he's wearing a Knight's T shirt Knights
of the Round Table. But I could also be like,
so are you None of us were wearing polo stuffinitely
all wearing Knights of the Round Table, so it didn't matter.
So the super ball knockoffs, but a big dent. And uh,
they were, like I said, usually a little bit smaller.
The regular super ball um was one point eight seven
(16:23):
five inches and if by comparison, you've ever held a raccketball,
that's about two point two five inches. Oh yeah, okay,
a little smaller than rocket. You got it. I like
the plumb comparison because it was also the color of
a plum. Yeah it's dark, yeah, like purple or black, right,
and in said made with amazing zectron. Yeah, which was
(16:45):
a big you know, that was a big draw. Uh.
So let's talk about how cool this thing was. It
wasn't just a bouncy ball. And we keep saying was
there're still around? Yeah, but I mean at the time
when people were all aware of super balls, 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 made her fingers in the shape of a circle,
(17:08):
a plum plump size, a little smaller than the racket ball. Uh.
The cool thing about these well, there's a lot of
cool things, but one thing is how high it would bounce.
It had it would bounce back. They would claim a
resilience of So if you just drop it from twelve
inches onto something hard like a desk, it would bounce
(17:29):
back ten inches. Then on the second bounce nine point
seven to third bounce eight point seven five 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
(17:51):
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, you know it flat
and out right. It does a little bit, sure, and
when it flattens out. The reason it doesn't have a
hundred percent um coefficient of restitution or uh what was
it what was it called resilience, Yeah, or why it
(18:12):
doesn't have a d percent because when it drops, when
it deforms and hits a surface, it um a little
bit of heat energy is released as it deforms. Yeah,
So that so it loses there's a little bit of
energy loss, ten percent energy loss every time it strikes
a surface. Yeah, like when we did this episode recently
(18:34):
on crumple zones. Like if something hits something else, there's
gonna be a loss of energy. Uh. And in this case, um,
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 tab bit of
kinetic energy but it just places it pretty quickly, so
it might bounce like just you know, an inch and
(18:57):
then now a quarter inch and then nothing like the
one drunk guy at the bowling alley that throws it
like fifteen ft down the lane before it hits the floor. Yeah,
it'll usually bounce like one time. Right, you can also
do that if you're not drunk. I can tell you, Yeah,
what's the purpose there? I don't get it. I've never
got that. What slinging the bowling ball down that far?
(19:17):
It's just totally accidental. Okay for me, it's always been accidental.
I thought it was like watch this, Oh well, yeah,
then you're just a drunk guy, Like, who's a jerk?
You need to go home? Your thumb gets stuck, yeah,
or something like that, or just you know, forget to
release at the right moment, that kind of thing and
it just goes up. And then, yeah, we're not good bowlers.
(19:39):
I think that's a better way to put in. 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 get hooked on Starburst.
Did really Yeah, there's this vending machine in it, like
the Starburst just look perfect in it. And every time
I would just buy Starburst and then I can go
back and buy more Starburst. You would go to the
(20:00):
bowling alley for the class. Dude, are bowling? Class was
in the gym, like they would just set up bowling
pins and put tape down on the floor. Everybody's bowling
in their factory defect polo shirts and eyes I knockoffs,
and then you had to take turns setting up the
pins by hand. No, we went to like South Wake
(20:21):
Lanes and Woe that's crazy. Had a venue Michie was
Starburst kids sneaking beer and stuff. No, they didn't. We
were good kids. That's good at least at that age.
Good Toledo kids Tolden's to Ladians, Toledo white ians. What, oh,
(20:42):
Toledo owens. You're just making stuff up. Toledo pens, I
think is what they're called. They're going to take back
your key to the city. I never got that guy
gave up. I wonder how he's doing. There's a guy everybody,
I guess we can let you in on this private
conversation right right now. There's a guy who was an
early fan of stuff you should know who decided that
(21:04):
it was his mission to see to it that I
got the key to the city of Toledo. Wonderful. He
really tried, Yeah, I mean yeah, he was a nice
guy for sure, but he would harass the Congresswoman Marcy Captor,
who was a former Toledo mayor, and like everybody could
really really tried, it didn't happen. You need someone higher
(21:27):
up on 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. Yeah. Alright,
So should we talk a little bit about the Polly
Beute tad d N me how did you say it?
Polly Beuta dying polly beta dye. So those are three things.
(21:49):
The beaute beaut four part carbon chain h E N
E double bond d I too, right, So beaut beauta
dyne by itself, it's just a compound for carbon chain
double he looks two double bonds, right, Do people care? Really?
(22:13):
There's some chemists guy out there's like, yeah, no, I
mean they superballs are all over science class. Oh yeah,
they really are, and not just because they are amazing
chemically or their need at least chemically, I don't know.
I'm impressed by it, right, um, but also the physics
of them, not just their co of coefficient of UM
(22:34):
restitution and their elasticity, but also they have another UM
coefficient of friction. Yeah, this is pretty cool. It's like
totally um different than their their elasticity. They have a
surface that basically grips whatever surface or object that's thrown onto,
(22:55):
and it grips it so hard that the surface can
spin it a different way. So if you throw a
super Bowl with some backspin at an angle, it will
basically hit the ground and spin back towards you. It
changes its spin because it's there. There's so much friction. Yeah.
(23:17):
And if you get a super Bowl and you are
in a room with nothing breakable, uh, and you start
spinning and bouncing that thing, you never know where it's
gonna go. Never know because not only does it have
a high horizontal or vertical bounce, has an 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.
(23:38):
You got anything else? Now you've seen one in physics class.
If you have a fun professor, you probably bought a
Super Bowl in there and taught you things. And if
you don't, there's plenty of videos on YouTube that you
can watch. So hats off to Norman Stingly. Thank you
Norman for the Super Bowl. Uh. If you want to
(23:58):
know more about super Bowls, you can type that word
in the search bart how stuff works dot com. And
since I said search bars, time for listening. Now I'm
gonna call this dark meat. Hey, guys, web the podcast. Um,
you've probably got a hundred emails about this. Actually, David Hill,
(24:19):
we got one from you. I just finished listening to
the true stories of survival cannibalism. Uh, and you guys
explain 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 in the content
of myoglobin. My globin is a richly pigmented protein that
(24:42):
has used to store oxygen and cells. The more my globin,
the darker redder the meat will appear. Red meat is
muscle fibers that are used or were used for long
and durance activities and are classified as slow twitch muscle fibers.
They needed constant supply boxygen to keep up their constant activity,
so they have hired my I Globin concentration in white meat.
(25:02):
White beat, on the other hand, is comprised of past
which fibers. These are used for quick burst of energy
followed by a moment of breast like a flapping of
a wing. Best to you, David Hill. Thanks a that, David.
That's how we like our corrections, Sybil to the point,
what did we get wrong? I don't remember that. That
(25:22):
was because of more blood vessels. Okay, in the in
the meat, in the muscle. I see, I have it well,
Thanks David. If you want to correct us, you can
send us an email. This stuff podcast at how stuffworks
dot com. You can also hang out with us on
social media a s y SK podcast on Twitter and
(25:44):
s y sk podcast on Instagram. You can hang out
with us at Facebook, Facebook, dot com, slash stuff you
Should Know, and as always, hang out with us at
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
(26:05):
how stuff works dot com.
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