Force is a very important aspect of table tennis. The
paddle will exert a force on the ball and the ball will
exert an equal and opposite force on the paddle. This
phenomenon is known as Newton's Third Law. So the harder
you hit the ball it will accelerate faster, since the
ball has very little mass and force is equal to mass
multiplied by acceleration its not hard to accelerate
the ball quite fast, but it will slow greatly due to air
resistance which contributes to the Magnus Effect. To make
it harder to hit the ball a player might hit the ball at
an angle so that the ball and rubber of the paddle have
a great amount of contact giving the ball a great amount
of Friction (Thompson,
Johnson, The Physics and Math of Ping-pong and How
it Affects Game Play).
The image above shows a player whom has
just hit the ball with an immense amount of power. Power
is equal to work divided by time the paddle is in
contact with the ball. In order to do more work on the
ball the time interval must be short, so quick short
strokes will give the most power(Insert
Citation). Work is force multiplied by distance.
Since the distance cannot change the force must change
to increase the work. Force is the mass of the ball
multiplied by the acceleration of the ball. The mass of
the ball cannot change so we put more acceleration on
the ball. So to gain the most power in each stroke we
need as little contact with the ball and rubber as
possible (Thompson, Johnson, The Physics and Math of
Ping-pong and How it Affects Game Play).
"The distance still may not be changed so
the
shorter your swing is in contact with the
ball the more power you will theoretically
have,
but power and speed are not everything"
(Letts, G., 2010).
