It is impossible to flush a ping-pong ball
I went out to dinner with some friends tonight, celebrating a colleagues birthday (he's still younger than me, darn him). I ate much pizza in a rather decent little restaurant on the South Bank (where the trees are still spraying innocent tourists with water) and afterwards the group headed to a nearby bar where, during a lull in the conversation, I spotted a postcard containing the text that headlines this entry.
The postcard advertises book of supposedly equally useless facts, but I'm not convinced by the once they chose to present to the world on the postcard. For a start, it uses the word impossible. Whilst I don't deny that some things in the world may very well be impossible (several of them involving George W. Bush and a sensible foreign policy), I suspect that rather more are merely improbable. And whilst it's improbable that a ping-pong ball would easily flush down a toilet, I daresay that only a little bit of cunning and derring-do would solve that problem.
Points will be awarded for the most inventive way of discarding a ping-pong ball using a toilet. Extra credit will be given for the use of twisted ingenuity.
And why do I have the eerie feeling that at least one person reading this will at some point in their life have tried to flush a ping-pong ball...?
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OK, after reading the title of the post, and *after* I picked myself off the floor, I think it's fair to say that I immediately started thinking of ways to flush a ping-pong ball.
Of course, the spirit of the statement is "It is impossible to dispose of an unmodified ping-pong ball down a conventional toilet by means of the standard flushing mechanism."
Lead weights, sliced ping-pong balls, liquids other than water, etc. would probably all work to prove the title wrong. But I think Jonathan should dedicate a How2 special to this just to be certain ;-)
BTW, I won't be trying this at home cos I don't want to block up my nice new lavvy ;-)
I agree. I think that if one flattened or smooshed the ping pong ball or removed the air inside in some other way, it would flush just fine.
I could tell you all, but then I'd have to kill you ...
She means it you know...
Oh, go on Mark. You know I'm a sucker for flattery.
I just flushed one..it was beautiful...never see her again.
couldn't resist posting this to kick it off again:
http://www.sudsnfloodtamer.com/Flushing.htm
Check it out for an almost scientific answer to your musings...