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These discrepancies may be a result of the foam dimensions. The foam was punched into cylindrical shapes manually and therefore, may not exactly be 1" in diameter and 1" in depth; some may have larger diameters and some may have smaller diameters due to skewed punching. The process of picking samples to use for different physical experiments was random. Therefore, the results should be generally centered around the theoretical pressure values. Additionally, the process of determining minimum versus maximum compression values may not have been consistent. There was no standard gauge used to signal when x-percent compression occurred. We were therefore forced to determine visually when both 1-percent (minimum) and 100-percent (maximum) compression had occurred. Of course, using vision only is not a very precise method.
The average pressure found to trigger compression is approximately 1.25kPa, whereas the average pressure found to achieve full compression is approximately 3.00kPa.
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