{"id":2579,"date":"2008-05-08T09:17:05","date_gmt":"2008-05-08T09:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/08\/nondorky-poll-beer-pong\/"},"modified":"2008-05-08T09:17:05","modified_gmt":"2008-05-08T09:17:05","slug":"nondorky-poll-beer-pong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/08\/nondorky-poll-beer-pong\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-Dorky Poll: Beer Pong"},"content":{"rendered":"

The video that accompanies this PopSci.com article<\/a> is pretty impressive. A bunch of college kids show off their ability to hit trick shots with ping-pong balls, bouncing them off walls, doors, floors, moving skateboards, people, and items of furniture and into beer cups. As the PopSci piece notes, there’s a good deal of physics in this– if every student put half as much effort into learning the material as these guys put into practicing trick shots, the world would be a better place.<\/p>\n

The title of the piece, however, is “The Physics of Beer Pong,” which brings us to today’s non-dorky poll question:<\/p>\n

\n

Beer Pong: Paddles or no?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is a critically important doctrinal dispute, so leave your answer in the comments.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Of course, as all right-thinking people know, the game of “Beer Pong” requires paddles, and is played like regular ping-pong with cups of beer placed on the table. You volley the ball back and forth, hitting only lob shots, until the ball hits one of the cups, at which point whichever team loses the point has to take a drink from their cups. If the ball lands in a cup, that’s two points for the other team, and the team whose cup the ball ended in has to finish their beers (unless they can throw the ball into one of the other team’s cups).<\/p>\n

The game in which people stand at opposite ends of a table and toss ping-pong balls at cups of beer is not “Beer Pong.” It’s “Beirut,” or “Ball Tossing,” or “We’re Too Incompetent to Keep Track of Ping-Pong Paddles,” or something like that. It’s a game for heretics, incompetents, and the weak-minded.<\/p>\n

The only thing lamer is “Beer Die.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The video that accompanies this PopSci.com article is pretty impressive. A bunch of college kids show off their ability to hit trick shots with ping-pong balls, bouncing them off walls, doors, floors, moving skateboards, people, and items of furniture and into beer cups. As the PopSci piece notes, there’s a good deal of physics in… Continue reading Non-Dorky Poll: Beer Pong<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,11,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-science","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}