Last week we were asked the question, Can you damage a ball by over-inflating it? The obvious answer is YES. Every ball has the recommended PSI printed somewhere on the ball. In most cases it is around the valve and these should be noted and stuck to. If you have an issue later with the ball and it was found to be over-inflated it could void the warranty.
However, this is not the reason for this post. No, we then asked a slightly different question - What would happen if you over-inflated a rugby ball? We first set up an electric pump, 4 video camera's and waited.......and waited....and waited. After a few minutes i was volunteered to go back and turn the pump off as it clearing wasn't going to explode. The pump reached 40psi but we needed more power.
We then remembered we had an industrial compressor for a cardboard crusher and started to adapt this for our fun. We took off the adaptor from the electric pump and with a combination of gaffer tape, jubilee clips and friction managed to make the compressor suitable to inflate balls to a higher psi.
The result staggered us as we all took guesses to what psi it would take to get this Gilbert GTR4000 rugby ball to explode. Guesses ranged from 42 to 84psi and you can see the results on this video
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