Table Tennis

Quick action…

• Table tennis is also known as ‘ping-pong’ and ‘wiff-waff’.
• Table tennis is a sport or a game, played at a specially designed table, where a player must hit a ping pong ball over a net to the opponent, and can be played with two or four players.
• Table tennis is a quick game which requires very good reflexes.
• Table tennis has been governed by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) since 1926.
• Table tennis became an Olympic sport in 1988.

Table Tennis
Image courtesy of Singapore 2010 Youth Olympics/Flickr

• Table tennis was originally an English game that was invented in the 1880s and was commonly played by the wealthy after dinner.
• The modern table tennis ball was brought to Europe from the United States  in 1901 and the racket was also made in the same year.
• The table tennis ball is normally a small, light weight ball, 40 mm in diameter, and the modern table tennis table is 2.74 meters (9 feet) in length and 1.82 meters (5 feet) in width.
• Table tennis rackets, bats or paddles are often made from balsa, limba, cyress or hinoki wood and generally have a layer of rubber covering the surface.
• There are many different types of ways to hit or block balls in table tennis.

Bibliography: Table Tennis, 2013 Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_tennis>