At a party last night, I learned a trick for removing dents from ping pong balls: holding a flame near the dented ball causes the air inside the ball to expand and push the dent out.
It turns out that holding a flame near a dented ping pong ball doubles as an effective method for conflagrant projectile generation.
I thought we were going to be on the news last night after a blazing (formerly dented) ping pong ball was flung from a back porch into a cluster of beautifully landscaped bushes (rather than, incidentally, into a large cup of water immediately in front of the hurler). Fortunately, the brightly burning missile was entirely incinerated before any of the shrubbery could catch fire. Were it not for the rapid and complete combustion, Connecticut would have soon been added to the list of states with raging wildfires. It was close.
For the visual learners among you, here is a clip demonstrating both outcomes of flaming a ping pong ball. For those seeking less igneous techniques for ping pong ball dent removal, click here.
