Sunday, August 31, 2014

Water Balz Jumbo Polymer Balls



Such cute, bouncy little music from a video about fun, deadly little toys.

Ok, deadly might be an overstatement, but the jumbo growing spheres available from various companies have been recalled because, as written on the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's website...
The soft and colorful product can be easily mistaken by a child for candy. When the marble-sized toy is ingested, it can expand inside a child’s body and cause intestinal obstructions, resulting in severe discomfort, vomiting, dehydration and could be life threatening. The toys do not show up on an x-ray and require surgery to be removed from the body.
That's a bit of a bummer as the gel spheres are great in class for demonstrating index of refraction, lensing in an eyeball, crosslinked polymers, and osmosis & diffusion and as a medium for watching seed germination. Some companies - including Education Innovations, a favorite of the ASM teachers camp program - are still selling the spheres in smaller sizes, but it appears that the giant spheres are no longer available because they can sort of stop of the intestines.

Which is bad...

...but isn't as bad as ingesting Aqua Dots would be.

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