Why do tennis rackets have strings, rather than being solid like a table tennis racket?
In: Engineering
Table tennis balls are usually light and rigid. The game is more about direction and speed and you don’t need highly elastic material to change the momentum of the ball owing to the conditions of the ball and the court. But on the other hand in tennis you need direction,speed and you should also be able to change the momentum of the ball(to the opposite direction). As the ball is heavy and has high speed your simple table tennis racquet won’t be able to change the momentum easily. So you need to have a highly elastic material (strings) to be able to absorb the incoming momentum and also be able to impart momentum in the other direction. You can try to hit a tennis ball with your TT racquet. You won’t be able to hit the ball to the other court unless you hit it really hard. This is why cricket bats have a bulge at the lower end of the bat( the sweet spot) as it makes the bat more elastic and helps the batsman to hit balls over the boundary.
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