The Most Fun You Can Have With Ping-Pong Balls

By Brent McKnight | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Science class was always far more entertaining if your teacher had a little bit of wingnut to them. They were always blowing something up, burning things, or using random household chemicals to create a rocket that could soar the length of the football field.

In high school the scope of such experiments and demonstrations were rather limited, as instructors didn’t always have access to things like liquid nitrogen and 1500 ping-pong balls. Fortunately for the students in Dr. Roy Lowry’s class at Plymouth University, he is not faced with such shortages. Check out this video to see exactly what kind of fun you can have with those two components, an empty soda bottle, and a garbage can.

This is certainly one way to make science fun, and most definitely a way to make a bunch of kids wasting time on the internet think, “Now I want to be a scientist.” How better to illustrate the way liquid nitrogen goes from a liquid to gaseous state than by using that change to cause an explosion and launch a bunch of ping-pong balls in the air? I particularly enjoy the montage that shows the eruption from multiple angles and in various speeds, very climactic-moment-in-a-war-movie. If only there were dramatic string music playing over the top.

This is all well and good. Yay science, and all of that. One thing, however, you can’t help but think about while watching this video is, who has to clean up all of those ping-pong balls?

Subscribe for Science News
Get More Real But Weird

Science News

Expect a confirmation email if you Subscribe.