Hockey puck
A hockey puck is either an open or closed disk used in a variety of sports and games. There are designs made for use on an ice surface, such as in ice hockey, and others for the different variants of floor hockey which includes the wheeled skate variant of inline hockey ( roller hockey). They are all designed to serve the same function a ball does in ball games. A closed disk made of vulcanized rubber is used in the sport of ice hockey. The closed disk has also been referred to as a "Flat Ball." Hockey pucks are  designed for use on either an ice surface, dry floor, or underwater, though open disk designs have only been used on floors. Hockey pucks in the shape of open disks are used in a particular style of floor hockey and should not be confused with ringette rings which are toruses. Ringette rings are objects designed for use in the sport of ringette and will be of either one of two designs: one design for use on ice and the other for use on dry floors which is used in gym ringette. The ring used for the ice game of ringette  is a rubber pneumatic torus. The gym ringette ring is a torus made of a sponge-like material and unlike the ice ring, is not hollow. The ringette "practice ring" ( "turbo ring") is not a torus, but a small open disk used on ice to help ringette players develop and hone pass receiving skills. This article deals chiefly with the sport and game pucks which are closed disks. Etymology. The origin of the word "puck" is obscure. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests the name is related to the verb "to puck" (a cognate of "poke") used in the game of  hurling for striking or pushing the ball, from the Scottish Gaelic "puc" or the Irish "poc", meaning "to poke, punch or deliver a blow": It is possible that settlers of Halifax, Nova Scotia, many of whom were Irish and played hurling, may have introduced the word to Canada. The first known printed reference was in Montreal, in 1876 ("Montreal Gazette" of February 7, 1876), just a year after the first indoor game was played there. A hockey puck is also referred to colloquially as a "biscuit". To put the "biscuit in the basket" (colloquial for the goal) is to score  a goal. In ice hockey. Ice hockey requires a hard disk of vulcanized rubber. A standard ice hockey puck is black, thick, in diameter, and weighs between ; some pucks are heavier or lighter than standard "(see below)". Pucks are often marked with silkscreened team or league logos on one or both faces. Pucks are frozen before the game to reduce bouncing during play. History. Ball games on ice. The sport of bandy, prior to its first official organization in Britain, had its informal variants spread to North America where they and game concepts from lacrosse, shinty and hurling served as  precursors in some format to ice hockey. These informal games utilized various types of balls while being played on ice until the latter half of 19th century Canada, after which the game of ice hockey and the ice hockey puck began to take their official shape and form. Shape and material. By the 1870s, flat pucks were made of wood as well as rubber. At first, pucks were made in the shape of a square. Records from the first indoor ice hockey game used a wooden puck, to prevent it from leaving the area of play though new evidence has  shown that cuts from large corks have also been used. Rubber pucks were first made by slicing a rubber ball, then trimming the disk square. The Victoria Hockey Club of Montreal is credited with making and using the first round pucks, in the 1880s. Variations. There are several variations on the standard black, hockey puck. One of the most common is a blue, puck that is used for training younger players who are not yet able to use a standard puck. Heavier training pucks, typically reddish pink or reddish orange in colour, are also available for players looking to develop  the strength of their shots or improve their stick handling skills. Players looking to increase wrist strength often practice with steel pucks that weigh ; these pucks are not used for shooting, as they could seriously harm other players. White pucks are used for goaltender practice. These are regulation size and weight, but made from white rubber. A hollow, light-weight fluorescent orange puck is available for road or floor hockey. Other variants, some with plastic ball-bearings or glides, are available for use for road or roller hockey. Two major developments have been devised to create better puck visibility on  television broadcasts, but both were short-lived: Firepuck. The use of a "Firepuck" in the early 1990s was the first attempt to improve the visibility of hockey pucks as seen on television. This invention incorporated coloured retro reflective materials of either embedded lens elements or prismatic reflectors laminated into recesses on the flat surfaces and the vertical edge of a standard hockey puck. Yellow was the preferred reflected colour. A spotlight was required to be positioned on the TV camera and focused at the centre of the viewing area. A short demonstration tape of the Minnesota North Stars skating with  the Firepuck was shown during the period break at the 1993 NHL All-Star Game in Montreal. The International Hockey League (IHL) pursued testing the Firepuck with its inventor, Donald Klassen. The next television viewing was the IHL All-Star Game in Fort Wayne, Indiana, January 1994, where the Firepuck was used for the entire game. The IHL tested the Firepuck in two more games, and finally the East Coast Hockey League used it January 17, 1997, for their all-star game. The use of the Firepuck was discontinued because of these reasons: The Firepuck name was branded during the  1990s but has since been discontinued. Smart puck. The FoxTrax "smart puck" was developed by the Fox television network when it held National Hockey League (NHL) broadcasting rights for the United States. The puck had integrated electronics to track its position on screen; a blue streak traced the path of the puck across the ice. The streak would turn red if the puck was shot especially hard. This was an experiment in broadcasting intended to help viewers unfamiliar with hockey to better follow the game by making the puck more visible. It was ill-received by many traditional hockey fans , but appreciated by many of the more casual viewers. The system debuted with much publicity in the NHL All-Star game at the Boston Fleet Center on January 20, 1996, but the system was shelved when Fox Sports lost the NHL broadcast rights three years later. In game play. During a game, pucks can reach speeds of or more when struck. Zdeno Chára, whose slapshot clocked in the 2013 NHL All-Star Game SuperSkills competition, broke his own earlier record. The current world record is held by Denis Kulyash of KHL's Avangard Omsk, who slapped a puck at the  2011 KHL All-Star Game skills competition in Riga, Latvia with a speed of . Fast-flying pucks are potentially dangerous to players and spectators. Puck-related injuries at hockey games are not uncommon. This led to the evolution of various types of protective gear for players, most notably the goaltender mask. The most notable incident involving a spectator took place on March 18, 2002, when a 13-year-old girl, Brittanie Cecil, died two days after being struck on the head by a hockey puck deflected into the crowd at a NHL game between the Calgary Flames and Columbus Blue  Jackets in Columbus. This is the only known incident of this type to have occurred in the history of the league. Partly as a result of this event, the glass or plexiglass panels that sit atop the boards of hockey rinks to protect spectators have been supplemented with mesh nets that extend above the upper edge of the glass. Manufacture. NHL regulation pucks were not "required" for professional play until the 1990–91 season, but were standardized for consistent play and ease of manufacture half a century earlier, by Art Ross, in 1940. Major manufacturers of pucks exist in Canada, Russia , the Czech Republic, the People's Republic of China, and Slovakia. The black rubber of the puck is made up of a mix of natural rubber, antioxidants, bonding materials and other chemicals to achieve a balance of hardness and resilience. This mixture is then turned in a machine with metal rollers, where workers add extra natural rubber, and ensure that the mixing is even. Samples are then put into a machine that analyses if the rubber will harden at the right temperature. An automated apparatus, called a pultrusion machine, extrudes the rubber into long circular logs that are in diameter  and then cut into thick pieces while still soft. These pre-forms are then manually put into moulds that are the exact size of a finished puck. There are up to 200 mould cavities per moulding palette, capable of producing up to 5,000 pucks per week. The moulds are then compressed. This compression may be done cold or with the moulds heated to for 18 minutes, depending on the proprietary methods of the manufacturer. They come out hard and then are allowed to sit for 24 hours. Each puck is manually cleaned with a trimmer machine to remove excess rubber . The moulding process adds a diamond cross-hatch texture around the edge of the puck for more friction between the stick and puck for better control and puck handling. The practice pucks are made by a similar but faster process that uses larger pre-forms, thick, puts them into moulds automatically, and applies more pressure and heat over a shorter period of time to compress the puck into the standard size. This allows approximately twice as many pucks to be manufactured in the same time period as the more exacting production of NHL regulation pucks. People sometimes freeze pucks to  prevent them from sticking to the ice. The list of former or present-day major producers includes In roller hockey. Roller hockey pucks, in-line hockey pucks, are similar to ice-hockey pucks but are made from plastic and thus lighter. They have small ribs protruding from their tops and bottoms which limit contact with the surface, allowing better sliding motion and less friction. These pucks are mostly commonly red in color but can be found in almost any color, though light, visible colours such as red, orange, yellow, pink, and green, are typical. Roller hockey pucks were created so  inline hockey and street hockey players could play with a puck instead of a ball on surfaces such as hardwood, concrete, and asphalt. In underwater hockey. Originally known as "squid" in the United Kingdom and now more commonly known as "Octopush", underwater hockey uses a type of puck that while similar in appearance to an ice hockey puck, differs in that it has a lead core weighing approximately within a teflon, plastic or rubber coating. This makes the puck dense enough to sink in a swimming pool, though it can be lofted during passes, while affording some protection to the  pool tiles. A smaller and lighter version of the standard puck exists for junior competition and is approximately 1 lb 12 oz (0.80–0.85 kg) and of similar construction to the standard puck. While there are numerous regional variations in colour, construction and materials all must conform to international regulations stipulating overall dimensions and weight. The regulations state that pucks should be a bright distinctive colour, for example high-visibility pink or orange, and that for World Championships these are the only acceptable colours. In Spongee. Spongee "sponge hockey", is an organized recreational cult game that emerged in Canada around the  1950s and is played in the Canadian city of Winnipeg. It gets its name from the puck that is used: instead of the hard vulcanized rubber puck used in regular ice hockey, a softer sponge puck is used. At on point some locals referred to it as "Tweeter" based on the sound the original pucks made. The game is a variant of ice hockey and was influenced by Canadian road hockey players and ice hockey players playing shinny on outdoor rinks in running shoes and winter boots. The game is played in winter strictly on outdoor rinks (no matter how  cold), does not use ice skates, and has codes involving less contact. Broomball shoes are sometimes used. The spongee puck originated when someone took a toy red, white and blue handball and cut out the center, leaving a rude approximation of a standard hockey puck. Eventually manufactured types of sponge pucks came into use, some of which were developed in Slovakia and had a spring core. Spongee pucks are softer than ice hockey pucks and have more bounce. In other sports and games. The term "puck" is sometimes also applied to similar (though often smaller) gaming discs in other sports  and games, including novuss, shuffleboard, table shuffleboard, box hockey floor hockey and air hockey. Alternative uses. Ice hockey pucks of regulation diameter and thickness may be used as mechanical vibration dampening isolators in places such as feet for light industrial air compressors, and air conditioning units because they are of regulation materials and therefore consistent manufacture, size and shape, and are constructed of a repeatable and consistent vulcanized rubber material. Since the material is rubber, it may be drilled out or milled easily to a fixed depth as rubber feet or used as rubber spacer or gasket material. A very  common use of a slotted hockey puck is as an adaptor between the metal foot of a trolley jack and the sill (rocker panel) of an automobile. The sill has a spot-welded lip which fits into the slot of the puck and would otherwise be bent or marked by the metal foot. Hockey pucks have been used to level furniture, beverage refrigeration systems, wedding mementos, and as paper weights or door stops. The hockey puck has many uses other than its original, intended purpose by virtue of its consistent physical properties. In November 2018, faculty of Oakland University in  Michigan received hockey pucks and training to throw them as a possible last-ditch defense against active shooters. The American Association of University Professors distributed pucks to its 800 members, and is working with student groups to distribute an additional 1,700 pucks to students.