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There’s no shortage of plans online for building a simple ping pong cannon that can fire balls at hundreds of miles per hour. But you’re probably not going to find the details of Purdue University Professor Mark French’s cannon, since his creation can accelerate a ping pong ball to 900 miles per hour, or just over Mach 1.2.
At that speed not only do you not have the slightest chance of returning the serve, it’s probably best to be no where near the table because as demonstrated in this video, the ping pong ball is easily capable of blasting clean through a ping pong paddle.
In fact, forget guaranteed Olympic gold were this creation ever cleared for official competition. Even though they weigh next to nothing, the ping pong balls leaving the cannon have the equivalent energy and momentum as a bullet leaving a .32 calibre pistol, meaning in the right situation, they could most certainly be lethal. So maybe ping pong will finally get the respect it deserves. [YouTube via Gizmag]
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You don’t try this stuff at home, that’s stupid and irresponsible
You try it at work!
I’m impressed the ping pong ball doesn’t just crumple
As long as it doesn’t rupture, then there’s no reason for it to.
A pity we didn’t get to see it after the impact though.
I’ve hit a ping pong ball hard enough for it to crumple and I’m damn sure it didn’t reach 900 mph
That’s you hitting the ping pong ball though, not the other way around. Might have been fast enough that it doesn’t get the chance to compress much
colour me confused
Tbh, I’m low on coffee, I’m not completely sure where I’m going with this either…
I might try again tomorrow
Jump to 05:45 for the good stuff
Or wrap the ball in a Ferrite foil and use a rail-gun
My only complaint is that they managed to set all this up, get it to work, but didn’t have a high speed camera to play it back in super slow motion so we could see the bat shatter and how the bat and the ping pong ball reacted when they collided.
It does seem a bit of a waste of an opportunity, doesn’t it?
Crime against humanity!
I have a good vaccuum pump. I have to try this….