Water-soaked ping pong ball?

Question

Float a water-soaked ping-pong ball in a can of water held more than a meter above a rigid floor. Then drop the can.

What happens to the ball as both drops? What does this say about surface tension?

When happens to the ball when it makes impact with the floor?

Answer 1

I have run this scenario through my personal supercomputer simulation (my brain), and what will happen is that when the can of water hits the floor, water will explode out of the can, and probably most of the time so will the ping-pong ball, and there will be a mess on the floor. A more gently deaccelerated can of water with the submerged ping-pong ball (yes, in a weightless condition, the ping-pong ball will probably become submerged through surface tension, no different from why a soap bubble would be a sphere) will restore hydrostatic pressure on the ping-pong ball, causing it to float to the top once again. At exactly the right range of deacceleration, it should be possible for the ping-pong ball to "pop" right out of the can cleanly. tinker has given a good answer, but I doubt that dropping the can more than a meter onto a hard floor would result in anything but a big splash.

Addendum: I have just checked this out empircally, and sure enough, I even got wet from the water ejecta. And I didn't even have to drop much more than a meter.

Answer 2

The bucket should fall away from the ping pong ball because of Resistance to the atmosphere.
The bucket will hit the floor then the ball will hit the water.
If the ball was some way soaked with the water,suction could have held it in contact with the water and it would bounce a bit when the bucket hit the floor.

Answer 3

I'm not completely sure about this, but I think that once the can is dropped and is in free fall, the ball will sink due to surface tension. In free fall gravity is sort of canceled out by the fact the can is accelerating with the force of gravity, so the fact that the ball has lower density wont stop it from "sinking". (I'm not sure I worded that last bit quite right, but the basic idea is there) Once the can hits the floor the buoyancy of the ball will become effective and it will start floating again, quite suddenly due the rapid deceleration of the can, and the ball may very well pop out of the can.