I don’t know if you’ve ever lit a ping pong ball on fire, but it’s a rather exciting thing. (I have done so)

They are made from celluloid, the highly flammable material that movie film was once made of, and lighting even one ball can sate the little pyromaniac in many of us.

A truck load of ping pong balls is literally hazardous cargo, which is why the Rio games has moved to “Polyballls”, which contain no celluload.

These are not flammable, and they bounce in much the same way, but they are having some durability issues:

The Olympics is apparently dealing with its own version of deflategate.

Matches in Rio de Janeiro have ended with balls that look like they combusted from being smashed — even though players haven’t changed their pressure in any way. It’s a new and frustrating problem in a game marred by hiccups like a green pool and then, a fart-smelling green pool.

That’s because the official balls of 2016 are made of a new non-celluloid material that inhibits durability, says David Brasfield, a customer service representative at Paddle Palace, the official ball supplier of the United States Table Tennis team. What’s worse is that this problem isn’t limited to the DHS ball that’s being used in Rio de Janeiro; all new polyballs are facing similar ball-busting problems.

Despite the growing pains, the switch to non-celluloid balls was practically a necessity because of the severe fire hazard posed by celluloid balls. “We can now have a large quantity of balls come by air quickly, and we couldn’t have done that before,” points out Brasfield; previously, containers of celluloid balls had to be delivered by hazmat trucks with flammable solid warnings plastered all over them.

Mostly though, I am posting this for the the burning vid.  I could watch this all day.

Later, I’ll show you a trick with a dry cleaner bag.