They then played 1,590Hz sound waves from the speaker array to glide the ball through a pre-planned path while microphones detected feedback known as a scattering matrix as it bounced off the ball.

The students had just broken the sound barrier — with a ping-pong ball. “This has been a true engineering project,” said Kristine Lang, chair of CC’s physics department.

Here's a look back at how the name "ping-pong" originated and what it's called at the 2024 Olympics. Skip to content. ... who sampled the sound of a table tennis ball bounce in a song.