Posted on 10/29/2009 4:20:34 PM PDT by JoeProBono
LAUDERHILL, Fla. (AP) -- Look, over there. Under that blue tarp in a suburban driveway. That thing that's the size of a Smart car?
It's Joel Waul's rubber band ball.
Waul has spent the last six years carefully wrapping and linking and stretching rubber bands of various sizes into the ball shape. The Guinness Book of World Records declared it the world's largest rubber band ball in 2008.
On Thursday, Waul said goodbye to his creation. A team from Ripley's Believe it or Not came to his house with a crane and hauled the 6-foot, 7-inch tall, 9,032-pound behemoth away on a large, flatbed truck.
"It's a little bit sad to see it go, but it's going to be appreciated by thousands and hopefully millions of people in Ripley's museum to see and wonder, 'What was this guy thinking?' " Waul said.
The ball will eventually be displayed in a far-off museum yet to be determined, so folks can marvel at Waul's obsession.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Joel Waul, 28, climbs on top of his rubber band ball on the driveway of his home in Lauderhill, Fla., Friday, Oct. 23, 2009. Waul who works nights restocking a Gap clothing store, has spent the last six years carefully wrapping and linking and stretching rubber bands of various sizes into the ball shape. The Guinness Book of World Records declared it the world's largest rubber band ball in 2008. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
Only in FLA!
My Ohio friends will roar...we always come out #1...Hanging Chads, etc.
In Kansas we have the world’s biggest ball of twine. I’ve added to it.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/8543
and then something went horribly, horribly wrong. As the crane was lifting the ball, one of the rubber bands caught on the edge of the carport and no one noticed in time. The crane was lifting the ball, the band stretched and stretched until boiiiiiiing, the rubber band ball launched as fast as you could say ARES-1. Up, up and away like a big silver UFO went the ball, jerking itself off the crane's hook that was positioned for lifting, not for restraining. ...
Okay, now the fun part. Drop it from a height of about 100 feet and see how high it bounces. Sure, it might break apart in spots, but still quite a bounce I’m sure. Any freeper physics freaks care to calculate this one?
I pull bigger things out of my belly button in the morning.
Well in Mass we've got the world's biggest a$$ho...ah, never mind.
where does one get rubber bands that big?
ROFLMAO!!!!!!
Is that an auto? Illegal
Rejected headline:
Florida Man has No Life
Also;
Florida Man Wastes 6 years
But OTOH he may go into the recordbooks, even though it’s kind of lame and requires nothing special to do.
it’s not a rigid structure, so it probably wouldn’t bounce at all. by rigid, i mean that the bonds between the individual elements are not rigid. they’re just piled on top of each other. the atoms in a rubber ball are all interconnected, a fixed or ‘rigid’ connection.
also, each individual band is not that strong. its mass is more than the individual pieces can bear. the bands will break when stretched beyond their limits. if the ball is dropped one foot, the ball has 9,000 foot pounds of energy.
A few years ago, another guy built the world's biggest rubber-band ball and then dropped it from an airplane. It didn't bounce so much as, well, crater.
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