#flubber

Flubber’s size will be difficult to ascertain because we don’t have it to put in a graduated cylinder, without also mentioning that flubber is sadly fictional. But there are clues that the movie gives us.

There are several points of reference we could use, such as flubber on the mambo record:

Or Flubber on the back of the T-bird:

Or even Wilson’s mouth:

But the professor holds flubber quite a bit…:

Specifically, this shot comes to mind:

This screencap is probably the best bet for our purposes: Flubber is at rest in a vaguely uniform shape and we have a clear reference: the professor’s hand. But that begs the question… how big was Robin Williams’s hand? We don’t have exact measurements to go on. We’ll instead hazard to use the average male hand breadth, which is about 3.5 inches.

Now, Flubber is a dome with a circular base about the size of Robin Williams’s hand. We’ll add another quarter to compensate for the slight spill-over. We can guesstimate Flubber’s height based on Robin Williams’s finger length and say… about two inches, judging by the comedy legend’s finger being bent about 45°, and his fingers being roughly the same as his hand breadth.

This gives us…

A height of 2 inches and a diameter of 3.75, the latter of which halves to a radius of 1.875

Now that we have the numbers, we can make our calculations. The equation for the volume of a dome is… *googles*:

V=1/6πh(3r²+h²)

With a height of 1.25 and a radius of 1.875, it’s:

V=1/6π2(3(1.875)²+2²)

Punching all that in gives us…:

15.2334518776

What a mouthful! (literally!) We can round that to, let’s say…:

15 cubic inches, or 39.6 cubic centimeters.