Essay On Table Tennis

1393 Words3 Pages

The game of table tennis is a pastime that involves a great deal of understanding in order to become an expertise. The physics as well as mathematics are intriguing concepts to explore. These concepts help us better understand the game and how to become the best player one can possibly be. Newton’s laws of motion play a big role in this game. They affect major elements to the game and make the game interesting. Other major players in the game include air resistance, work, momentum, and torque. Ping pong is a sport played on a table with paddles and a ball. Two opposing players stand on opposite ends of the table. Their objective is to volley the ball back and forth over the net. The paddle is usually made from laminated wood covered with …show more content…

The amount of air resistance depends on a few factors. The two most common are the speed of the object and the cross-sectional area of the object. The faster an object is falling, the more air resistance there is. An object with a higher mass fall faster than an object with less mass in a situation with air resistance. This is unlike objects in free fall situations. The force created by air resistance eventually becomes large enough to balance the force of gravity. This means that the object has a net force of 0 N and has stopped accelerating. This state of the object is considered reaching a terminal velocity. Consider a golf ball compared to a ping pong ball. A golf ball weighs more giving it the larger force of gravity. It will fall considerably faster than the ping pong ball. This makes the ping pong ball an ideal candidate for the game of ping …show more content…

When a player exerts a force on a ping pong ball with the racket, the rackets exerts that force on the ball, and the ball exerts an equal force back onto the racket. This allows the ball to fly across the table to the other side where the opponent may do the same. A ping pong ball exhibits something called the magnus effect. This is an interesting occurrence where a spinning object flying through the air creates a whirlpool around itself and experiences a force perpendicular to the line of motion. The air effects causes a sideways force. There forces forces the ball to curve by moving faster on one side that the other. This may give you an advantage while fooling your opponent of the motion of the ball. Work is the force exerted on an object in the direction of motion multiplied by the object’s displacement. The ball’s displacement may not be changed due to the length of the table is only 3 meters long. The force is the only factor that may be increased or decreased. For example: A person hits the ping pong ball with force of 50 N and the displacement was recorded at 3 meters. What is the amount of work? W =

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