The hockey puck.

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This six ounce, one inch thick, and three inch wide, circular chunk of vulcanized rubber has come a long way since the old days. By old days, I mean the 1800s where they were apparently using frozen cow poop as a puck. Yep. Cow poop.

Now, instead of frozen feces, pucks are made of rubber and a type of coal dust called carbon black. They are mixed with a special bonding material and then essentially compressed and cooked in a 300 degree oven.

Today all pucks are frozen before the game. This keeps the frozen biscuits from bouncing around on the ice. Every stadium in the NHL has a freezer in their penalty box where they keep the pucks. Officials change them out about every two minutes so there are probably around 30 pucks used in a single game.

Zdeno Chara of the Boston Bruins holds the NHL record for fastest shot with a rocket at 105.9 mph. I imagine a shot that hard would just go through a goalies breadbasket.

Ouch.

In the 1995-1996 season, fox wanted a puck that was easier to see on television. Thus, the FoxTrax puck was born. This puck had a computer board, battery and infrared emitters. It looked normal on the ice, but on television, it would illuminate a brightly colored circle around the puck, it would also change colors depending on the speed it was moving at. There were a couple problems with this. The first and most important, is that hockey fans don’t like it when you mess with hockey. Players also complained that these pucks didn’t move the same and couldn’t hold their cold as long. These costed about $400 per puck, which seems like a lot considering it’s there to be slapped around by hockey players. They discontinued this project at the end of the season.