What makes a Superball...so Super!?

Well it took Norman Stingley, a chemist at a rubber company and the imagination of Wham-o founders Richa and Spud to set him loose in their lab where he formulated "Zectron".  Sounds really space age1960's scientific huh?  While it has no scientific meaning, the name fits right into the space race of the time, and was a great sounding slogan for the packaging, "made with Zectron.

What really makes a Super ball bounce with the enormous elasticity that we all love is a polymer called polybutadiene.  But by itself at different temperatures is gooey or brittle.  This is where Norman took a page from Goodyear tires, and mimicked their vulcanization process with sulfur and cooking the mixture under pressure at the same time.  And wallah...the purplish round sphere that bounces like crazy is born.  It's Superball!

To take it full circle back to a space.  NASA took a page from this tried and true Wham-O toy in developing what they call the Superball bot.

Sources:  How Stuff Works.