Bowling Advancements Explained By Physics

Bowling Advancements Explained By Physics

Bowling is believed to have originated from Egypt nearly 5000 years ago, making it one of the oldest sports known to man. Many features of the game have changed though, from the original limestone flooring and stone ball that they used to use back in those days. In the past twenty years the sport of bowling has drastically been changed from a game of skill and power to a sport where an understanding of physics and the right equipment can benefit you more than athleticism.

Present day bowling is played on proprietary synthetic bowling lane surface, no longer do they us maple or pine trees. Although this surface is designed for bowling, it would still not last very long with constant abuse from bowling balls, so they have put a mineral oil on the first 45 feet (out of 60 feet) of the lanes, and this is done once a day.

This has been taken advantage of by bowling ball companies who were working to combine speed and a greater angle of entry (between the head pin and the pin directly beside at a sharp angle will increase chances of a strike). They have created a ball with an outer layer with resin on it which has a very low coefficient of friction with the mineral oil part of the lane but has  a very high coefficient of friction on the last 15 feet with out oil on it, this is shown very well in this video at the 1:30 part of the video they compare two bowling balls, and the blue one does not have as strong of a curve at the end because it is not a resin ball, but the black one curves at a much sharper angle because it is a resin ball  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx_RF2JtEbc.

As well companies have been developing bowling balls with different cores, which directly affects the radius of gyration, the radius of gyration relates to an object in rotation, the distribution mass from the center of the object, and the moment it enters inertia. A low radius of gyration will allow the ball to spin with less hand requirement then a higher radius of gyration, a higher radius of gyration will help your ball stay on line longer, while a lower radius of gyration, will give your ball more reaction to spins.