Silly Putty Essay Research Paper Can you

Silly Putty Essay, Research Paper Can you name a toy that was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame this year, along with the Tonka Truck, beating over 80 other classics nominated last year, including Raggedy Ann and G.I. Joe, and that even has two different crayon colors named after it? That toy is Silly Putty, my friends. Now Silly Putty can add its name to that honored hall of fame, which includes time-cherished toys such as the Hoola Hoop, Crayola Crayons, LincolnLogs, and the Monopoly Game. Silly Putty is a pretty unique substance. Chemically, it is a dilatant compound, a silicone based polymer that is highly elastic, and non-toxic and non-irritating to the skin. But to most of us, it is just that amazing toy that stretches without breaking, yet it can be “snapped off” cleanly. It bounces higher than a rubber ball. It floats if you shape it in a certain way, yet sinks in others. It can pick up pencil marks from pages and comics from newspapers. If you slam it with a hammer, it keeps it shape, and yet if you push with light, even pressure, it will flatten with ease. Silly Putty could thus be used in the study of martial arts: it flows like water, breaks like a brick, it can disguise itself, and it has the agility of a cat. With all of these unique properties, it’s no wonder people are puzzled (yet love to play with) Silly Putty. This pinkish, bouncing, stretchy stuff, sometimes called the toy with only one moving part, has been the subject of dissertations by aspiring physicists and chemists for years. Silly Putty was invented by accident. In the midst of World War II, the Japanese continued to invade rubber producing countries in the Far East, cutting off supply to the United States. This began to hamper war production efforts, especially for truck tires and boots. As a result, the government’s War Production Board asked American industry to attempt to develop a synthetic rubber compound. A Scottish engineer, working for General Electric, was trying to produce rubber when a batch went bad; as a result, Silly Putty was born. However, no ?practical? uses were ever discovered. In 1949, it was first sold in a toy shop, outselling every item in the catalog, except one: a box of hexagonal Crayola Crayons. Since its discovery 50 years ago, the curious pinkish compound is now sold in 16 different colors including metallic gold, glow-in-the-dark, and “color changeables” that change from orange to yellow and purple to pink from the heat of your hand. More than 300 million eggs of Silly Putty have been sold; that?s enough to create a giant wad the size of the Goodyear Blimp? or if you prefer, you could wrap a strand 5 millimeters thick around the earth almost 6 times. Over the years, Silly Putty has been used for a great variety of things: it can be used to throw at the stock market listings so that you can invest in the stock it lifts off the page, to stick yucky vegetables under the dining room table, to take a fingerprint off of a truck that was broken into (they actually caught the culprit), to find the snooze bar on your alarm clock with glow in the dark Silly Putty, to dust off your window blinds, to fill in bowling ball holes that are too large, to hold your dog?s bowl so that it doesn?t slide around on the floor, to catch a fish, and it has even been used to give hairdos to Pez dispensers. For truly, as Stacy Gabrielle, the spokesperson for the Silly Putty company, said, “Whether you’ve stretched it like a rubber band, bounced it like a ball or used it for more practical purposes like cleaning a computer keyboard or fixing a wobbly furniture leg, the toy with one moving part is just as much fun to play with today as it was when it was first introduced over 50 years ago?; there is nothing else like Silly Putty. 31e