Two Games, One Table, One Competition
Table tennis isn’t our exclusive contention. My cousin and I are always combative… perhaps too competitive. It could be as slight as whom could consume food quicker or eat more… whom could eat slower or less. It didn’t matter. If there was a way one mortal could outperform the other in something, we would contend.
Unfortunately, the tiny abode my wife and I purchased does not have a lot of space for the various ways my first cousin and I desire to compete. After much calculation, my wife and I at long last settled on a pool table with one of the Stiga table tennis conversion tops. Fundamentally this gives us the ability to play either billiards or ping pong on the same table in the same room.
So now my cousin and my notorious competition proceeds. Of course, he invariably complains that it is not the true thing. Even though he ordinarily trumps me in pool, every single time we place the table tennis conversion top along the billiard table, it seems his game errs.
To put it simply, I think it’s because I’m just plain the better ping pong player. But unfortunately, he has too many excuses. The elevation is not correct. The proportions are off. The list proceeds on. So I procured the measuring tape. The proportions and height were spot on to the official table tennis dimensions. Then he claimed the table caused the wrong bounce; that in some way the pool table beneath affected the velocity and elevation of the ball bounce.
So we investigated the official bounce measurement (indeed, there’s an official bounce measurement). It’s for each 30 cm of drop, there must be a 23 centimeters bounce. We tested the bounce in over a dozen positions on the conversion top. In every place the ball bounced almost perfectly straight up and almost exactly 23 centimeters high. So you realize, table tennis conversion tops do a perfectly respectable job replicating a good game of table tennis. And my first cousin has no excuses. I am simply the superior ping pong player.
This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 5:10 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.