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 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.
The title of the piece, however, is "The Physics of Beer Pong," which brings us to today's non-dorky poll question:
Beer Pong: Paddles or no?
This is a critically important doctrinal dispute, so leave your answer in the comments.
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).
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.
The only thing lamer is "Beer Die."
Comments
# 1 | bc | May 8, 2008 10:19 AM
No paddles is clearly superior in every way. Further more, team beer pong, or beer flip, in which a made cup triggers a flip cup race down the side of the table is the pinnacle of American athletics.
# 2 | Scott Spiegelberg | May 8, 2008 10:28 AM
What about Quarters? Tap once, continue in same direction, tap twice switch directions.
# 3 | Cameron | May 8, 2008 10:30 AM
Beer flip? No, that's called Flip Cup. And bc you're definitely right, it's a pinnacle of American Athletics.
No paddles wins. It's hard enough to keep track of ping pong balls, let alone paddles. And c'mon, they break way too easily. And with more cups on the table, you're more likely to drink more (people always fill their cups too high).
# 4 | Ben | May 8, 2008 11:25 AM
Beer flip? No, that's called Flip Cup. And bc you're definitely right, it's a pinnacle of American Athletics.
It seems pretty clear that he's talking about playing beer pong where every time people make a cup a side game of flip cup is started. I think beer pong is an okay but not great game, but flip cup just seems really dumb to me. It seems like a game invented by and for women for whom beer pong (or a genuine boat race if you want the relay aspect) involved too much drinking.
# 5 | tonyl | May 8, 2008 11:26 AM
Paddles. Without the paddles it's not beer pong, it's beer toss the ball in the cup.
# 6 | barney | May 8, 2008 11:39 AM
Up in these parts, paddles are not optional and the game seems to play a very significant role in undergrad social life.
# 7 | Aaron Lemur Mintz | May 8, 2008 11:40 AM
You can call it 'Beirut' or 'We're too incompetent...' or whatever you want, paddleless is superior. Preferably played in 2-person teams, so everyone has a scapegoat.
# 8 | MRW | May 8, 2008 11:51 AM
Without getting into superiority, it has to use paddles to be called "beer pong".
# 9 | Austin | May 8, 2008 12:31 PM
No paddles!
# 10 | CCPhysicist | May 8, 2008 1:26 PM
I thought you were going to point out that the dorky analysis of that video neglected drag. Anyone who has played any form of pong, other than the original video game, knows you have to worry about drag ... not to mention spin and the coefficient of restitution when a bounce or two is involved.
I'm too old to have played beer pong, but around here it is usually played without paddles in the driveway using a card table rather than something that would simulate actual ping pong. When we played ping pong, which was a lot, we held the beer while we played and spilling any cost you a point.
# 11 | Josh | May 8, 2008 2:35 PM
Our favorite in college was what you call "Beirut"(no paddles) but we called it "Beer Pong". I agree that there is no reason to call it "Beer Pong" except that it is played sometimes on a ping-pong table.
# 12 | Craig | May 8, 2008 6:39 PM
We played both out in Santa Barbara, but Beirut was infinitely better. Beirut has all the excitement of a tight basketball game; Dartmouth pong the thrill of a third grader's tennis lesson.
(That, and we didn't play any of this "take a sip if the ball hits the cup" crap in the paddle version. Sink it or nothing. Hence I'd have to have a personal beer off to the side just so I'd have something to drink during the long dry spells.)
# 13 | NIK | May 9, 2008 11:36 PM
No way! No paddles. technically, i guess it's "beirut" without paddles, but f-it, I'm from the midwest, AKA "flippy cup" country. so it's beer pong for me.