Author: Emily Conover / Source: Science News for Students
Researchers are studying how best to shoot a rubber band. For help, they turned to physics and high-speed video. What they learned offers tips for making a clean shot — without hitting your thumb!
There’s more than one way to shoot a rubber band. Alexandros Oratis and James Bird are mechanical engineers at Boston University in Massachusetts. These researchers focused on one particular technique. First, give a thumbs-up. Now put the rubber band around the tip of your thumb and pull it back with the fingers of your other hand. Then let go.
To make sure their shots were consistent, the researchers used a cylinder as a stand-in for a thumb. Then they filmed a close-up of the shot in slow-motion.
As a rubber band is stretched, tension builds within it. The scientists saw that when they let go of the band, a release of that tension quickly travels along the rubber toward the cylinder (see the video). The band itself also zings toward the cylinder. But it moves more slowly than does the release of its tension, the scientists learned.
As the band shoots forward, the…
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