Scale and physics

When making things to small the physics engine is a bit buggy, a 10cm ball will bounce endlessly for instance. When I set that ball to 1m this is solved but now the ball looks like it is falling with a acceleration of 1m/s instead of 10m/s. So I figured to increase gravity, although the ball is now falling a bit more convincingly the impact on other rigid bodies look strange.

So is there a proper way to simulate small stuff like a tennis ball or even a pinball.

You should change the mass of the rigidbody to help you there. Also changing the scale to anything other than 1 will cost you a little in terms of performance so its good practise to avoid scaling anything with physics where possible.

BTW for pinball I have a feeling you wil want it to be bouncier, for that look into physics materials, it has properties for things like friction and I think bouncing as well