Oh, patents! Waboba® balls!

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann Wanna have some summer fun? Try a Waboba® ball and join the Wabobians worldwide! A Waboba® ball is a ball that can bounce on water. In fact, it even skips over water, just like a stone that you might throw at a special angle to make it ricochet over the surface of the water. Only this is a ball that bounces without ever sinking! It is manufactured with a polymer gel center that flattens when it hits the water, and bounces or skims across the surface the water. The inventor, Jan Von Heland, is from Sweden, and he was inspired while playing upside-down Frisbee with his son in the water! Below, the patent abstract and a drawing, and above the image of the marketed Waboba® ball! Have fun! :-)                                                            Abstract - WO2010071528  The present invention relates to a water bouncing ball (10) comprising a gel core (12) made of plastic material and an elastic porous plastic material(14) adjacent the gel core (12) and covering and centering the gel core in the middle of the ball (10). The ratio between the diameter (D) of the gel core and the thickness (T) of the elastic porous plastic material is in the range between 0.66 and 2.8. In this way a soft floating ball having good bouncing ability is provided.

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