Another mystery object thread - foam with spheres washed up on beach

[Gatopescado]

@Ike_Witt

This sounds vaguely dirty.

@Enola_Straight

Indeed…spheres with a hard, smooth surface probably slide around past each other during a pour to effectively fill a volume to be styrofoamed.

So does this.

[Beckdawrek]

Styrofoamed? It could work.
Gives a whole new meaning to a ‘cheap cooler’

[carnivorousplant]

@Enola_Straight

Indeed…spheres with a hard, smooth surface probably slide around past each other during a pour to effectively fill a volume to be styrofoamed.

They appear to be well lined up, not random like gravel in a concrete pour.

[Enola_Straight]

Spheres of uniform size appear to settle orderly in a volume.

[Kimstu]

Yup, maximal-density face-centered cubic lattice packing.

[MrDibble]

@Machine_Elf

If there’s foam inside the spheres and outside the spheres, what was the point of the spheres?

The foam inside the spheres may not be the same foam as the foam outside.

[Riemann]

@Machine_Elf

If there’s foam inside the spheres and outside the spheres, what was the point of the spheres?

@MrDibble

The foam inside the spheres may not be the same foam as the foam outside.

Another possibility is that the broken spheres we can see with foam inside were broken during the pouring process, and filled with foam then, whereas the intact ones are hollow. The density adjustment may not need to be too accurate, so the spheres may be minimally engineered so that only most of them stay intact.

[LowSignalToNoise]

@Machine_Elf

The close-up photo of “der klumpens” (love that :D) definitely shows the spheres are filled with foam. If there’s foam inside the spheres and outside the spheres, what was the point of the spheres?

Guessing (again without evidence) the foam spheres are cheaper per unit volume then the white foam.

[Colophon]

@MrDibble

The foam inside the spheres may not be the same foam as the foam outside.

That seems to be the case. See the image of similar foam here: https://www.lankhorst-offshore.com/en/subsea-buoyancy

The spheres seem to have a light styrofoam type of filling, while the surrounding foam is denser.

[Mangetout]

Infill from a Strange Grid Ball, obviously.

[Philster]

My instinct when seeing it was a ship ‘fender’ … which might be called a ‘bumper’ by landlubbers. Huge thingy that keeps ship from banging into docks/piers.

Shape checks out. Size checks out. Materials check out. Here ya go: Marine and Boat Fenders | IRM Offshore and Marine Engineers

The link isn’t necessarily linking to the make and model, per se, but you’ll get the point.

Occam’s Razor: Things that are made of such material, which are big and which are most easily lost by big shippy things.
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[Philster]

Also: Products Solutions and Services | Marine-and-infrastructure

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[Isilder]

So why the brown balls ?

maybe

• waterproof balls … so that if the white foam starts becoming waterlogged, the brown balls provide some bouyancy

• Hold the skin out as a mould… Otherwise, the skin could collapse and won’t set into the correct shape.

• makes it strong under compression … while it remains weak under tension. That means it won’t easily be squashed to nothing. But should it become wedged at the wrong place, it can be pulled apart. Thats why this lump got to go floating around nude (no skin. The mould skin combo is left behind, probably with the mooring line )… They caught the bouy with a line and the line broke it apart. So this is the part of the guts that floated away.

[GusNSpot]

“We estimated that it was normal waste that did not contain any toxins.” Also, the contents of the bullets, which released something like a styrofoam after breaking two plastic jackets, had been harmless. “So we arranged for the removal of the object at the end of last week.”

2 jackets for a chemical reaction? (something like a Styrofoam?) To what end? Ship bumpers take some very heavy hits and would pulverize any Styrofoam? Skin so delicate that an anchor rode sliding across it would rip it open? And that is used in a ship bumper?