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Top table tennis players often return ping pong balls at speeds of more than 100mph (161km/h).

By their very nature, the ping pong balls are light and paddles are sturdy, but when fired at supersonic speeds, the whole dynamic changes. 

An air-powered bazooka has been designed that can fire the little white balls with so much power, they travel as fast as an F-16 fighter jet, with dramatic consequences for paddles that get in the way.

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Now that's a smash: A ping pong ball travelling at around 400 metres a second (Mach 1.2) hits a wooden paddle, travelling straight through it. This video is made in slow motion

John Huhn, from the Department of Engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, captured the destruction of one paddle in slow motion, to show what happens when a lightweight ball meets a wooden paddle at supersonic speeds.

The action can be seen in the video at 30,000 frames per second,The Blaze reported.

In February last year, engineers from the university revealed their deadly weapon – an air-powered bazooka – that fires balls at more than 400 metres a second, or about Mach 1.2.

The machine was created by an aeronautical engineer for the U.S. Air Force, Mark French with help from his graduate students at the university, Craig Zehrung and Jim Stratton.

The team made the machine - that can blast balls clean though plywood or aluminium and deeply dent steel - using materials including plastic tubing and duct tape.

Instructions: This diagram shows how the air bazooka was built. The machine can blast balls though plywood or aluminium and deeply dent steel, despite being built from materials including plastic tubing and duct tape

Game, set, match: John Huhn, from the Department of Engineering at Purdue University captured the destruction of one paddles in slow motion, to show what happens when a fragile ball meets a wooden paddle at supersonic speeds. This frame shows the paddle breaking at its handle after the speedy impact

Despite the low-tech materials, the machine can fire balls that break the sound barrier and can hit 919mph (1,479kph).

The machine is so powerful because it uses a pressure chamber connected to a vacuum tube via a 'convergent-divergent nozzle'.

Dr French explained: 'That hourglass-shaped nozzle is similar to what is used in fighter jets. When the pressurised air rushes through the bottleneck it accelerates to supersonic speed as it helps propel the ball through the clear PVC barrel.'

It is surprising that the lightweight balls - weighting just 0.08oz (2.3g) - can reach supersonic speeds because they have poor aerodynamics. Hole in one: Fired at close range, the ping pong ball blasts a hole through a traditional paddle at speeds of around 919mph (1,479kph)

Supersonic: The ping-pong ball fired by the researchers at their lab in Indiana achieved speeds comparable to that of an F16 jet (pictured) racing across the landscape

But they can deliver enough energy to blast through targets equivalent to a brick falling from a tall building.

'There is not enough money you could give me to get me to step in front of that gun,' he said.

The scientists explained that the ping pong gun is a popular tool for demonstrating acceleration and the power of pressure differentials in air when explaining concepts in physics lectures.

'It has even proven to be a challenging problem for computational fluid dynamics since it encompasses a range of aerodynamic phenomena that are particularly difficult to model,' Dr French said.