The Effect of Foam and Gel on Vibration Absorption through Bearing Ball Displacement

Anastasia Samets

Overview

The study was conducted to progress drones as a viable method of delivery by aiding companies in reducing material costs. Drones may be a step towards a safer form of delivery since they reduce unnecessary contact and exposure with others during the Covid-19 pandemic. In order to reduce material costs, foam and gel, which are both materials that compose the polymer sorbothane, were tested to see whether they yielded significantly different absorption rates compared to one another. The absorption rates in this experiment were defined as the average displacements of a bearing ball for each material during its three recorded trials. Each material was tested by creating individual petri dishes, composed of the chosen material, with printer paper that had marked measurements on it, in centimeters. Then, a bearing ball was placed on top of the paper, in the center. Each dish was then agitated by a vortexer. The trials were recorded using an iphone placed upon a tripod in order to later accurately measure displacement values through the use of ImageJ. After completing the three trials of each material, average displacement values were calculated. The standard deviation of each material was calculated and used, along with the displacement values, to create a bar graph. Through the conduction of a t-test, a significant difference between the two materials in average bearing ball displacement values was observed. The study supports that the gel material was the better absorbing material since it showed a much lower average displacement value than the foam material when observed on the bar graph.

My Story

Originally, I had wanted to create something that would impact our society, even if just in a small way. But, it wasn't easy to think of something since I either didn't have all the needed materials to implement it, or it was too abstract of an idea. Then, as Covid-19 grew into a bigger problem for our country, my mother began to express her worries about coming into contact with people when she was picking up her medication. You see, my mother is immunocompromised due to Hodgkin's lymphoma, a sort of cancer that begins in your lymph nodes and can spread. I began to worry for her and started to brainstorm other ways for her to receive her medication. I started researching drones, a contactless form of delivery that I thought could be an easy fix to the problem. Except, it wasn't. Drones had long been in the works for transportation but they were super expensive, especially when fragile things needed to be transported, such as medication. The main sort of "protection" against air turbulence and other issues was sorbothane, a great vibration dampener but also an expensive product. I decided that an inexpensive vibration dampener could possibly speed up the process of drone delivery becoming an everyday thing. So, I researched the main components of sorbothane, which turned out to be gel and foam, and decided to begin experimenting on them to find the better option!