Flubber … Busted!

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PMVUt:AL
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SCIENCE
rlubber...
Busted?
It's a rubbery
substance that looks like
green goop. Slap a
handful on a Chevy or
your best friend~and
the stuff creates enough
energy to send them
soaring through air!
What is it? Flubber, the
star substance in
Disney's new movie~
what else?-Flubber.
If the goop solllids too
good to be real, it is.
Flubber defies one of
physics' cardinal rules:
the Law of Conservation
of Energy. Energy can't
be created or destroyed,
the law says. Take a
basketball, for
instance. The ball
has no energy at
all. Only when you
apply your
own
energy does
the ball sail
through air.
So how
could
Flubber
make a
real ball
soar? It can't!
.
Energy can only
be converted from
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one form into another,
the law states. Lift a
basketball in the air.
Just by raising it in your
arms, you transfer
potential energyenergy stored for later
USe-to the ball. Drop
the ball. Do~s+cu.
rebound
higher than
the
position
from which
you let it go?
No way.
As the
ball fell, the.
potential
energy you
gave it was
converted into
.~:::~~~=£
;;;.::~.
strongest weight
.~~
lifters to lift the 1963
T-bird car that Flubber
sends flying!
energy, the
energy of
motion,
which the
ball used to
bounce back up. Some
of the kinetic energy
was converted into
friction (surfaces
rubbing together) from
air molecules and the
ball hitting the floor. So it
rebounds almost as high,
8
.;:' ......~.!.!;;:;;.~~;~.
'.;
set designers
created a 2.,500seat basketball
stadium just for the
movie.
;
.
a..
but not quite.
Drop Flubber, and it
sends anything it's
attached to sky-high.
Impossible! says Mark
Semon, a physics
professor at Bates
College in Lewiston,
Maine. "People break
human laws all the time,
but you can't break a
natural law."
-Laura Allen
'~h~' ;~~~.~~~~~.~~~~~........
invention was Silly Putty!
It was an accident-in
the
I940s scientists were trying
to create fake rubber for
plane tires.
4 . SCIENCE WORLD
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