High Speed Videos

Ping-Pong Ball Collision

This collision is different from all the others. This is a ping-pong ball colliding with the wall, but since ping-pong balls are made from hard plastic, there is no compression whatsoever. The ball simply bounces off the wall almost instantaneously, although the ball's speed is drastically reduced. This is because the hard plastic can not push back against the wall, so much of the ball's energy is absorbed by the wall. Another very interesting observation is the fact that the ping-pong ball breaks after it collides with the wall. By watching the video carefully, you can see that the ball starts to split in half approximately 6 ms after colliding with the wall. While this may seem insignificant, it is a very long time in high-speed imaging. The framerate used was 2000 frames/sec, and the shutter speed was 10X, or 1/20000th of a second.