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The Inside of a Ping-Pong Ball

Anyone who has ever stepped on a ping-pong ball and broken it, or smashed one too hard on the edge of the table, will know what the inside of such a ball looks like: it is white, like the outside, tough unlike the outside there are no markings on it; the seam is visible, about one twentieth of an inch wide and, unlike those of larger balls like footballs or basket balls, simply circular. It is filled with air. That is, when cracked open, it is obviously filled with the same air that is all around it; but as there is usually no evidence of any other gas inside, nor some powdery residue or so, nor either a sucking in of air or a popping sound, as one would expect if it were vacuum, Occam's Razor forces us to assume that the same air is inside it while it is still whole. And that, as far as seems to be most people's opinion, is all one has to know about the inside of a ping-pong ball. Not for us, however; for the inquisitive mind, there are yet a lot of things to wonder about concerning a ping-pong ball's inside.

To begin with, we may ask ourselves why the ball's interior is white. An answer is, at least to the direct of thinking, easily found: because the ball as a whole is white. When one thinks about this a little further, though, one sees that this is not a real answer. It has merely moved the question to a broader field: that of the whiteness of the ball itself. This, too, is easily answered: the plastic of which these balls are made is white when produced. A few years ago, this might have satisfied. Now, however, when we have witnessed the advent of the bright orange football and the blue tennis court, we can only wonder why nobody has introduced a differently coloured ping-pong ball. The game is mostly played on a dark green table; it could very well improve the visibility of the ball, and with that the standard of play, to use balls of the same fluorescent orange as is now being tried for footballs. This would also, of course, have a profound effect on the inside of the ball; but why is it not even tried? Probably, that question can be answered in one word: tradition. The maker of ping-pong balls is a creature of tradition, and so is the player; we will see more evidence of this later on. We proceed, then, to what is in the ball; and here, the most striking effect of traditionalism is seen. Let us compare the ping-pong ball with that other small ball of white colour, the golf ball. Over the years, there have been golf balls with innards of cork; there have been leather golf balls, rubber ones, ones filled with rope, and experimental golf balls made of various kinds of plastic. We will not even discuss all the different arrangements of dimples and scratches, since these live on the outside and therefore find no place in this essay. Contrast this, however, with the lack of imagination which has been applied to the filling of the ping-pong ball. As far as can be ascertained, this has always consisted of air. Surely some use could be made of modern chemistry to make the ball lighter or heavier, and thereby make play more interesting?

Granted, sucking the poor things vacuum might not be a very good idea. They are fragile as it is, and it is not necessary for them to show their insided any more often than they already do. However, one might try filling them with some kind of gas. Helium, for instance, is only about one eighth to one seventh the density of air. With the right amount of helium added to the air inside the ping-pong ball, it could almost, but not quite, float. Not oonly would this require quite a different technique to properly hit the ball, but it would also greatly increase the height and distance to which it could be propelled, making far more spectacular play possible.

On the other side of the scale, one could fill a ping-pong ball with a gas heavier than air. It is proably not very wise to try this with chlorine or even bromium vapours; this essay began with the assumption that many people break ping-pong balls, and it would be unfortunate if this exposed them to poisonous substances. For similar reasons, radon will not do -we do not want our players to end like Marie Curie- but the other noble gases may. Krypton is over two times as heavy as air; xenon almost five times, even. Not only would the increase in mass resulting from filling a ping-pong ball with one of these gases make it bounce less, it would also make it harder to hit sufficiently hard, and therefore, it would travel slower. All this would combine to make the game rather easier to play; it seems, then, that a krypton or xenon filled ping-pong ball would be ideal for beginners at the game.

Such changes might also solve a long-standing problem in the world of ping-pong. For years there has been a dispute between those people who insist that the proper name for the game is table tennis, and to call it ping-pong shows a despicable undervaluation; while others think that ping-pong, onomatopoeic as it is, not only describes the game perfectly but is also friendlier. Without wishing to take either side in this matter, one could, of course, call the game with the faster ball table tennis, reserving the name ping-pong for the noble-gas-filled game, and both could live together in peace.

But alas, such changes will not be, and only because most people are too lazy to consider the inside of a ping-pong ball.