Table Tennis and Physics

Abstract

Table tennis is a fascinating sport with a lot of physics elements. This chapter will concentrate on the forces acting on a table tennis ball. Insights from molecular dynamics simulations clarify the basic properties of table tennis balls interacting with surfaces and their high coefficient of restitution. The table tennis ball trajectory is discussed considering the different force balance contributions. The sum of the gravitational force and the forces from aerodynamics, namely drag and lift, determine the flight path. Extensive numerical modeling is used to study the impact of changes in ball size and net height to the game characteristics. Half a billion different initial conditions like hitting location, initial spin and velocities were analyzed to reach sufficient statistical significance for the different cases. An advanced statistical analysis of the database generated by the simulation is presented.