- What happens when you take two and a half meters of PVC pipe, stuff a ping-pong ball inside, cover each end with thermal blanket Mylar, suck out 98% of the air, put a soda can on one end and puncture the Mylar at the other end?
Okay, every body ready?
Three, two, one.
(bang) - [Brandon] Wow, that was very loud - Let's see the damage on the can.
That is some epic damage.
Most of the energy went into the destruction of the can this time, not in the ping-pong ball.
Hey I'm Diana, you're watching Physics Girl and I love this demo because it's obnoxiously loud, destructive and demonstrates some really cool physics related to space.
So I'm gonna use this demo, not because I want to shoot ballistic ping pong balls at everything but because we can use it to dive into some great, but seemingly unrelated questions.
Question one, how do you use ping pong balls to make car crashes safer?
Question two, could you survive a hole in the space station?
