''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. The original Super Ball was invented by California chemist Norman Stingley in his spare time in 1965 He worked at Bettis Rubber Company, who turned down his idea. 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. "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.

Once Wham-O constructed a giant Super Ball, which was unfortunately dropped out of a 23rd story window of a skyscraper in Australia. The ball bounced back up 15 stories, and then fell back down, landing 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 science behind the way Super Balls bounce.

Patents

---

• Stingley, Norman H., -- -- "Highly Resilient Polybutadiene Ball" -- March 22, 1966

External links

---

• Wham-O
• Superballs.com, a tribute site
• History of the Superball
• Kinematics of an Ultraelastic Rough Ball

• http://www.big-boys.com/articles/superball.html (watch what happens when 100,000 Superballs are released down a steep, narrow, paved street)

Physical activity and dexterity toys | 1965 introductions