500mph Ping Pong Ball Cannon

[HardOCP News]

It is pretty cool to see a ping pong ball hit the 500mph mark. All the action takes place at the 6 minute mark in the video so, if you are short on time, skip ahead.

 

[Viper16]

"...Next on Jackass ping pong to the balls"

 

[Fanattic]

Didn't Mythbusters break 1000mph with a ping pong ball?

 

[Nolan7689]

Now let's do a golf ball.

 

[cyclone3d]

So how fast would it go if you used a vacuum pump to evacuate the air and then instead of just puncturing the mylar on the back end, just have a regular plug attached to an air compressor tank that was at say 120-125psi instead of only using the lowly ambient air pressure of about 14.5psi as they stated?

1. Evacuate air
2. Close vacuum pump valve
3. Open air tank valve
4. Watch faster than speed of sound ping pong ball?

 

[cyclone3d]

Now let's do a golf ball.

Pretty sure a gold ball would be way too heavy with that simple of a setup. And I really doubt that the ambient air pressure would be able to accelerate a golf ball nearly as fast as a ping pong ball.

 

[Dekar12]

So how fast would it go if you used a vacuum pump to evacuate the air and then instead of just puncturing the mylar on the back end, just have a regular plug attached to an air compressor tank that was at say 120-125psi instead of only using the lowly ambient air pressure of about 14.5psi as they stated?

1. Evacuate air
2. Close vacuum pump valve
3. Open air tank valve
4. Watch faster than speed of sound ping pong ball?

Pretty sure that is what Mythbusters did on theirs that was like 1k mph?

I think this is just to show a simple diy project that doesn't require a lot of setup other then a tube, pump, mylar, and ping pong balls.

 

[lcpiper]

So how fast would it go if you used a vacuum pump to evacuate the air and then instead of just puncturing the mylar on the back end, just have a regular plug attached to an air compressor tank that was at say 120-125psi instead of only using the lowly ambient air pressure of about 14.5psi as they stated?

1. Evacuate air
2. Close vacuum pump valve
3. Open air tank valve
4. Watch faster than speed of sound ping pong ball?

How about a paintball gun shooting into that vacuum?

 

[lcpiper]

BTW, I bet some of those really huge Artillery pieces could really benefit from this.

I know when we fired our 165mm Demo gun on the M728 CEV that the driver had to be buttoned up or get sucked out through his hatch and thrown out in front of the tank.

 

[Contraves]

I watched a video of this some years ago that gave a better demonstration.


Physics demonstration from BYU in 2011

 

[swimming pool]

I knew a girl that would do that trick at parties.

 

[Sly]

So how fast would it go if you used a vacuum pump to evacuate the air and then instead of just puncturing the mylar on the back end, just have a regular plug attached to an air compressor tank that was at say 120-125psi instead of only using the lowly ambient air pressure of about 14.5psi as they stated?

1. Evacuate air
2. Close vacuum pump valve
3. Open air tank valve
4. Watch faster than speed of sound ping pong ball?

Mach 1.4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msgfm4DHiyc

 

[cyclone3d]

I watched a video of this some years ago that gave a better demonstration.


Physics demonstration from BYU in 2011

Haha:

"I don't think I'll do that again"

 

[cyclone3d]

Mach 1.4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msgfm4DHiyc

From what I could tell, they didn't first evacuate the tube so they still had all the back pressure in front of the ball.

Here is one where somebody used a more elaborate setup, evacuated the tube, and used helium to achieve 1700mph

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z52yCL3tSGQ

 

[undermined]

And this is how the Hyperloop is supposed to work.... just with less abrupt deceleration at the end .