Nope. Wrong.

Sell the ping pong table, go buy more beer.

Who has, or wants, a ping pong table anyway!

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
...
A Glock 9mm pistol with extra standard cap ...

YES! Shoot it!


Wait a sec...trick question.

-take a few rounds from the spare mag.
-Pull the bullet, and save the powder. (use the knife or anything else you have to pull/pry the bullet)
-carefully put the powder down the pipe, such that most of the powder is under the ball, but a little left on top of the ball.
-take the primer'ed case that you have left over and put it in the chamber of the Glock.
-position the pistol just right over the pipe, pull the trigger to set off the primer.
-There should be enough charge in the primer to light the powder at the top of the ball, and this will cause a sympathetic ignition of the powder under the ball.
-the ball will shoot out like a ball in a musket.

1) volume of pipe = ((radius of ball inches)^2)*length inches=46.46 cubic inches
2) # oz of beer needed to float ball to top of pipe (assuming beer has specific gravity of water) = 46.46 cubic inches * (.58 oz/cubic in)=26.96 oz of beer
3) Solution: Can of beer = 12 oz, so 26.96/12 = 2.25 cans of beer required to float the ball
4) you still have 12-2.25=9.75 cans of beer to drink while staring at the ball floating at the surface of the tube

But I like the drink beer pee into tube solution better. I'm not an engineer.

quote:

Originally posted by wrightd:
1) volume of pipe = ((radius of ball inches)^2)*length inches=46.46 cubic inches
2) # oz of beer needed to float ball to top of pipe (assuming beer has specific gravity of water) = 46.46 cubic inches * (.58 oz/cubic in)=26.96 oz of beer
3) Solution: Can of beer = 12 oz, so 26.96/12 = 2.25 cans of beer required to float the ball
4) you still have 12-2.25=9.75 cans of beer to drink while staring at the ball floating at the surface of the tube

But I like the drink beer pee into tube solution better. I'm not an engineer.

Are you sure?

quote:

Originally posted by wrightd:
1) volume of pipe = ((radius of ball inches)^2)*length inches=46.46 cubic inches
2) # oz of beer needed to float ball to top of pipe (assuming beer has specific gravity of water) = 46.46 cubic inches * (.58 oz/cubic in)=26.96 oz of beer
3) Solution: Can of beer = 12 oz, so 26.96/12 = 2.25 cans of beer required to float the ball
4) you still have 12-2.25=9.75 cans of beer to drink while staring at the ball floating at the surface of the tube

But I like the drink beer pee into tube solution better. I'm not an engineer.

Very nice! I actually made it a 12-pack to avoid the above calculation. After all, wasting even 2.25 cans of beer is alcohol abuse.

EDIT: Wait minute, where's Pi? There's supposed to be Pi.

EDIT 2: I'm getting more like 185 cu in = 103 fl oz /12 = 8.5 beers. Good thing I got that 12-pack.

1. Guzzle four beers as fast as I can.

2. Pull condom out of my wallet.

3. Blow up condom as large as possible, without it bursting and then pinch the end shut.

4. Hold the pinched end of condom perpendicular to the hole and allow Mr. Bernoulli lift the ball out of the pipe.

(#1 helps me do something so silly.)

5. Drink Mr. Bernoulli's share of the beer.

Since I don't drink beer, I'd just pour the beer into the hole and float the ball up. OTOH, I probably wouldn't have the beer with me, either, so UTCWAP. (FWIW, I don't play ping-pong either.)

flashguy

I read Johnny 3Eagles' post and said to myself that was the answer, then I kept reading.
I got to sigmonkey's post, and had to reread.
Was Mr. Bernoulli previously mentioned??

Who is Mr. Bernoulli???

quote:

Originally posted by craglawnmanor:
Who is Mr. Bernoulli???

Swiss mathematician and physicist who knew much about suckage.

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:

quote:

Originally posted by craglawnmanor:
Who is Mr. Bernoulli???

Swiss mathematician and physicist who knew much about suckage.

Ohhhh, this explains everything!!

Thanks, kkina!!

Sorry, but I'm a little slow. I flunked third level Calculus at Auburn (well, over half the class flunked third level Calculus, because we had a professor that should have retired five years previous to our class), which gave me the "incentive" to become a History major & finish school without any debt...

Mr. Bernoulli!! Of course sigmonkey is a friend of his!!

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:

quote:

Originally posted by Johnny 3eagles:
Drink the beer and piss in the hole, floating the ping pong ball to the top?

Yep, you guys are fast. Absolutely correct. Can you tell us why this is the best way?

Cause I ain't wasting good beer.
Use the gun as motivation for someone to wash the ping pong ball off. (Cause I ain't playing with a pissy ping pong ball!)

Why was I thinking of an ex-girlfriend the entire time I was reading the problem. If she'd been there, retrieval of the ball would have been entertaining, and no beer would have been wasted.

Field strip the Glock. Take the barrel, slide the paracord through the barrel and tie a knot in the paracord to prevent the barrel from sliding off the cord. Chew up some of the bread from the sandwich and use a good sized glob of it to cover the knot. Lower the barrel swiftly into the hole so bread glob makes firm contact with the ball, then raise the barrel and bread glob with the ball stuck to it out of the hole.

Alternatively, take the tailcap off of the flashlight, cover the rim of the battery tube with slightly chewed bread, tie the head of the flashlight to the paracord and lower that swiftly into the hole. As the bread compresses when it makes contact with the ball, some air in the battery tube will escape creating a vacuum amd you can raise the ball out of the hole.

Never underestimate an engineers ability to complicate an otherwize simple solution.

quote:

Originally posted by craglawnmanor:

Who is Mr. Bernoulli???

Principal at the local high school?

Isn't a 2 foot deep concrete floor excessive?

Actually, it would need to be more than two feet for the beer or urine method to work. Otherwise, the liquid would just be absorbed.

quote:

Originally posted by Floyd D. Barber:
Isn't a 2 foot deep concrete floor excessive?

It's not my drawing.

quote:

Actually, it would need to be more than two feet for the beer or urine method to work. Otherwise, the liquid would just be absorbed.

You mean absorbed into the topsoil? Not really...you can dig a hole in dirt and fill it with water, no problem. And remember, the sides of the hole is steel pipe.

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:

quote:

Originally posted by wrightd:
1) volume of pipe = ((radius of ball inches)^2)*length inches=46.46 cubic inches
2) # oz of beer needed to float ball to top of pipe (assuming beer has specific gravity of water) = 46.46 cubic inches * (.58 oz/cubic in)=26.96 oz of beer
3) Solution: Can of beer = 12 oz, so 26.96/12 = 2.25 cans of beer required to float the ball
4) you still have 12-2.25=9.75 cans of beer to drink while staring at the ball floating at the surface of the tube

But I like the drink beer pee into tube solution better. I'm not an engineer.

Very nice! I actually made it a 12-pack to avoid the above calculation. After all, wasting even 2.25 cans of beer is alcohol abuse.

EDIT: Wait minute, where's Pi? There's supposed to be Pi.

EDIT 2: I'm getting more like 185 cu in = 103 fl oz /12 = 8.5 beers. Good thing I got that 12-pack.

You forgot to apply one of the essential skills of engineering - making a wild approximation to see if your answer makes sense, also known as the "idiot check."

A stack of 8 beer cans is significantly more than 2 feet tall and of significantly larger diameter than a ping pong ball. There's no way it would take 8.5 beers to fill the pipe.

He used Pi but just left it out of the written equation. The diameter of a ping pong ball is 1.57". The radius is 0.785".

3.14159 * 0.785" * 0.785" * 24" = 46.46 cu. in.

Thank you, Maladat. I actually did apply the rough approximation, and couldn't get why it seemed off by around half. Now it makes sense- including Pi, but using diameter instead of radius for the calculation. 2.25 beer cans is about correct.