Ping Pong balls make plane buoyant

Lrg Pingpong Wings
Ping Pong balls make plane buoyant Modern Mechanix, 1936.

Fun fact, from Donald Duck artist Carl Barks wikipedia entry...


A 1949 Donald Duck ten-pager features Donald raising a yacht from the ocean floor by filling it with ping pong balls. In December 1965 Karl Krøyer, a Dane, lifted the sunken freight vessel Al Kuwait in the Kuwait Harbor by filling the hull with 27 million tiny inflatable balls of polystyrene. Although the suggestion is often made, Krøyer denies having been inspired by this Barks story. Some sources claim Krøyer was denied a Dutch patent registration (application number NL 6514306) for his invention on the grounds that the Barks story was a prior publication of the invention. However no definite proof of this story is available. Krøyer later successfully raised another ship off Greenland using the same method, and several other sunken vessels worldwide have since been raised by modified versions of this concept. The television show MythBusters also tested this method and was able to raise a small boat.




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Comments

Oldest comments listed first.

Posted by: Y on March 17, 2008 at 11:47 AM

Mythbusters FTW!


Posted by: Kurt on March 17, 2008 at 2:47 PM

Bouyant and nearly explosive!


Posted by: dang_quesadilla on March 17, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Jeez, Harry, you gotta cut down. Look at the size of that spare tire...


Posted by: Anon on March 18, 2008 at 9:57 AM

@dang_quesadilla I know that was a joke, but, that photo was taken in 1936 and you have to remember where pants were worn then. That's not his belly that's his chest.


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