6 ms·

The insides of pro bowling balls

188 points by mhb 5y ago

zwieback 5y ago
I had no idea, now I'm disappointed that the pros aren't doing this with solid spheres.
- scott_s 5y ago
  I admit I had a similar initial reaction, but then I realized it's similar to golf clubs. Golfers don't use simple wooden mallets, nor do we expect them to. And part of the skill of the game is knowing when to use what when.
- reedf1 5y ago
  It is still very difficult to get a curve from a pro ball, it's just more possible. If you get one of these you are more likely to be confused with what it is doing that to suddenly be bowling turkeys and picking up spares.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  Pro's use very difficult oil patterns to bowl on. You can't see the oil unfortunatly so people don't realize how important it is to making the game fairly easy or very difficult. Most amateur bowlers who are holding a 200 average in their local bowling league would struggle to break 130 on the same oil patterns the pros use. Pro bowlers don't make a lot of money and I'd wager many people on this Website have more income per year than a professional bowler. But they do have an opportunity for making money on endorsements for things like expensive bowling balls. The ball matters to be sure. But the oil patterns used today in the pro circuits circumvent a lot of it. A pro would probably roll 300 game after 300 game on the types of oil patterns laid on a typical league lane.
  - zwieback 5y ago
    [googling "oil patterns"]
  - mhb 5y ago
    Would it be more interesting if the oil was made easier for viewers to see?
    - adventurer 5y ago
      It would https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1--KU5eBXBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1--KU5eBXBQ
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  I feel the same. Everything I thought I knew about bowling seems different now; of course those weird insides hook.
S_A_P 5y ago
Pretty light on detail and its been a while since I bowled, but back in college movies like kingpin and the big lebowski convinced me to buy my own bowling ball. At the time it was around a 150 bucks for the ball I used, and it had a different material on the outside than the shiny plastic house balls that allows better grip(Plastic, Urethane, reactive resin, etc). In addition to the lopsided weight, you could drill it differently(and fill in previous holes) if you wanted to adjust the hook. I know that I was able to bowl above 200 consistently and frequently would get 230-240 without much practice(other than the recreational bowling). The main reason being that having a bowling ball that is able to find the pocket will knock down more pins. Lastly, having a custom drill to your hand and finger size allows you to carry much more weight. I bowled a 16lb ball easily. The house balls at most bowling alleys drill enormous holes in the 15 and 16 lb balls so you have to give it a death grip to hold the ball.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  Modern bowling balls help a lot for strikes to be sure but a larger influence is the oil pattern on the lanes. Most places use a "house pattern" that looks like a "Christmas Tree" in that the oil pattern is nearly across the lane near the bowler and taper to a point in the center as it gets down the lane. This pattern helps the bowler a lot since shots that are thrown out too far (pushed) encounter a dry lane surface earlier and the ball can begin to find traction on the lane sooner so it has time to roll over and make its way into the pocket. Likewise if the shot is "pulled" the ball will skid on oil for a longer time before it finds traction and can roll over and thus have a better chance of finding the pocket and still maintain some angle to give a good chance of a strike. Professional bowlers do not use a "house shot" and in fact have multiple different oil patterns they use to make it more challenging. In general, a "reverse block" style pattern is used which means it is oily near the gutters and dryer near the center meaning imprecise shots are penalized harshly. But your typical bowling league doesn't have any incentive to use these types of oil patterns because everyone would be awful and not want to bowl there anymore and take their team to another house where they can score and enjoy themselves and delude themselves into thinking they could go pro. This is believed to have had a negative effect on professional bowling popularity as a spectator sport as many recreational bowlers roll high scores because of the easy shot and modern ball tech and aren't interested in watching pros who don't appear to be much better.
lmilcin 5y ago
I was always disappointed that I can't get the ball to curve. I now know a bunch of things need to be exactly perfect for this to be controllable or even happen at all. I no longer feel guilty on company bowling parties to just shoot straight:)
- desmosxxx 5y ago
  meh, just two finger hook grip it and you can spin any solid core ball. it's just not great for your wrist long term
- nemo44x 5y ago
  It's essentially impossible to hook a ball you get at the alley. They are made of polyester and just slide across the oil. You also don't have fingertip grips drilled in them. Pro's and bowling enthusiasts use the same type of ball (but fitted for their hand) for spares. You generally don't want a ball that can hook when trying to pick up a single pin. But strikes, a ball that can recover and angle towards the pocket and "roll over" right as it enters will store much of the energy you put into the ball and release it at just about the right time resulting in better strike odds.
  - plorkyeran 5y ago
    It's not remotely close to impossible to hook a polyester house ball. You have to go out of your way to do it, but it's not even particularly difficult to get some movement.
    - nemo44x 5y ago
      I guess my point was to do it effectively and consistently in terms of scoring. I mean, serious bowlers and professionals use them specifically because they don't like to move.
  - starky 5y ago
    Not true, if you get enough revs on the ball a urethane coverstock will curve no problem (IIRC most alley balls are urethane due to higher durability than polyester). Throw two handed with no thumb with your palm under the ball and axis rotation (i.e. the axis of rotation is at an angle to the direction the ball travels) and you will get significant curve.
mc32 5y ago
This story from a few months ago illustrated this[1]. It's the story of one of the main bowling-ball designers. A math student who becomes a bowling-ball designer. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27324564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27324564
romeoblade 5y ago
Bowling is my daughter and I’s weekly activity. We both just picked up our pro balls yesterday from the shop and tried them out. It’s a night and day difference from the house balls.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  Yes, just having a ball fit for your fingers is a huge difference. And not being made of plastic means you can actually get some angle from revving it. Keep them clean so they last awhile. Modern balls really soak up oil and should be cleaned after use.
irjustin 5y ago
Super cool stuff! While I had seen how it's made on... How It's Made - they show non-spherical cores[0], I hadn't known about the "Smooth Operator" as a benchmarking tool before competition. One of those industry things that are obvious once I know it, but semi-surprised to learn. I love How It's Made. [0] https://youtu.be/YAOX1ekylnQ?t=106 https://youtu.be/YAOX1ekylnQ?t=106
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  > I love How It's Made. I'm hoping that covid is the only reason they didn't make a 2020 season.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
unixhero 5y ago
This feel like a modification of the rules. EDIT: It is of course very cool.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Don't look at modern bows used by olympic archers.
globular-toast 5y ago
> Precisely shaped, meticulously balanced weight blocks leverage the laws of physics to help skilled alley jockeys throw a strike on most rolls. This is why I've always considered "pro bowling" some kind of bad joke. What fun is there in a sport decided by someone making a tiny mistake and not getting a perfect score?
- glasss 5y ago
  I am probably going to get yelled at about this, but I would say other sports are similar in nature. Darts and golf come to mind.
- brewdad 5y ago
  It's also probably why I still enjoy college basketball but the NBA leaves me cold. The pro players are TOO good and most regular season games bore me.
- starky 5y ago
  I mean, shooting and archery would absolutely fall into the same category. In reality, Bowling is much more complicated than it appears at first glance. The lane is covered in a thin layer of oil in a specific pattern. The pattern greatly affects the difficulty of hitting the pocket at the right angle to get a strike (effectively your play surface is invisible). On top of this, the pattern changes as others bowl on it. So even when you know the correct line, in two frames you may have to change your shot a little to continue hitting strikes. The pattern of the oil greatly affects how difficult the game is. Most league bowlers bowl on a "house shot" which will have no oil on the outside of the lane and more on the inside, this can make the room for error to be 5-10 boards, due to this many good league bowlers average 220+. You take that same bowler and put them on a "sport" pattern, or a PBA pattern, and they would be lucky to shoot 170. Those patterns may mean the bowler has 1-2 boards of room to miss, and potentially if you miss any more than that your ball travels off course by a couple pins.
glasss 5y ago
It was fun learning about bowling ball cores from my fiance's father. He runs a little pro shop out of his garage. What was more interesting to me was the dual angle drilling technique he used, a fair bit of math involved: http://www.bowlersreference.com/Ball/Layout/Dual.htm http://www.bowlersreference.com/Ball/Layout/Dual.htm
neur4lnet 5y ago
This seems more like an advertisement than a popular science article, which is a huge shame as it's an interesting topic.
- barbegal 5y ago
  Unfortunately a lot of science journalism is now funded by this kind of advertisement. The magazine publishes the story as handed to them by the advertiser without the journalist doing any scrutiny. No money changes hands so it's perfectly legal not to label it as an advertisement.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
Makes shooting straight with a house ball much more interesting than pro bowling, IMO.
frettchen 5y ago
The article and comments together are great, because all at once I have a newfound respect for the complexity of bowling (from the cores to the oil patterns) and yet am bolstered in the feeling that there is something inherently casual about it, mostly because - and I cannot get over this - I had never even considered the possibility of _scented balls_. That seems like a weird joke, and yet many of these highly engineered and fairly expensive balls seem to not only be scented, but, for some, to come in a choice of scents (matching their colours to some degree).
acomjean 5y ago
Candlepin bowling was pretty much the only bowling I found in massachusetts growing up. No holes in the the significantly smaller bowling balls, no removing fallen pins between bowls. Its different, but has fallen out of favor as a lot of the local bowling alleys have closed and large chains have moved in. It always seemed like an easier bowling to get started with... I always thought those fancy curves of regular bowling were by crazy spins.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlepin_bowling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlepin_bowling
RickJWagner 5y ago
I'm a former bowling enthusiast, even bowling professionally at the regional level. The article is right, the weight block is important. But there is even more physics at play in the ball surface and the way the holes are placed. (Making the ball heavier in places relative to the part of the ball that is the 'track', where it rolls, can greatly change the way the ball behaves.) For those with an interest, read sometime about a man named 'Don McCune', who went from being a middle-grade bowler to the dominant professional almost overnight because he discovered how hardness of the ball surface is important.
starky 5y ago
This article is pretty crap, it really gives no insight into what a core does to the ball (mostly change the shape of how the ball curves, not how much). Like how does the article not make one mention of how the core causes the rotation of the ball to change as it spins to reveal clean coverstock (i.e. flare)? The article is purely Storm's marketing about what they say about different cores. Not to mention, the core has a relatively minor effect on the balls performance than the coverstock, yet that is barely alluded to in the article.
pontifier 5y ago
When I was researching robotics simulation I came across inertia tensors. Basically the way a rigid body rotates can be described by a simple mathematical 3x3 array that describes the mass distribution within the object. These designs are interesting, but despite the weird bulbs or internal fins, the values of the inertia tensors could be compared objectively if they were available. I wonder if there is an untapped market for both testing of existing balls and construction of new balls with precisely controlled inertia tensors. Eg. "Build me a ball just like this one, but with 3% more inertia around the z axis"

188 points by mhb 5y ago

zwieback 5y ago

I had no idea, now I'm disappointed that the pros aren't doing this with solid spheres.

scott_s 5y ago
I admit I had a similar initial reaction, but then I realized it's similar to golf clubs. Golfers don't use simple wooden mallets, nor do we expect them to. And part of the skill of the game is knowing when to use what when.
reedf1 5y ago
It is still very difficult to get a curve from a pro ball, it's just more possible. If you get one of these you are more likely to be confused with what it is doing that to suddenly be bowling turkeys and picking up spares.
nemo44x 5y ago
Pro's use very difficult oil patterns to bowl on. You can't see the oil unfortunatly so people don't realize how important it is to making the game fairly easy or very difficult. Most amateur bowlers who are holding a 200 average in their local bowling league would struggle to break 130 on the same oil patterns the pros use. Pro bowlers don't make a lot of money and I'd wager many people on this Website have more income per year than a professional bowler. But they do have an opportunity for making money on endorsements for things like expensive bowling balls. The ball matters to be sure. But the oil patterns used today in the pro circuits circumvent a lot of it. A pro would probably roll 300 game after 300 game on the types of oil patterns laid on a typical league lane.
- zwieback 5y ago
  [googling "oil patterns"]
- mhb 5y ago
  Would it be more interesting if the oil was made easier for viewers to see?
  - adventurer 5y ago
    It would https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1--KU5eBXBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1--KU5eBXBQ
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
I feel the same. Everything I thought I knew about bowling seems different now; of course those weird insides hook.

S_A_P 5y ago

Pretty light on detail and its been a while since I bowled, but back in college movies like kingpin and the big lebowski convinced me to buy my own bowling ball. At the time it was around a 150 bucks for the ball I used, and it had a different material on the outside than the shiny plastic house balls that allows better grip(Plastic, Urethane, reactive resin, etc). In addition to the lopsided weight, you could drill it differently(and fill in previous holes) if you wanted to adjust the hook. I know that I was able to bowl above 200 consistently and frequently would get 230-240 without much practice(other than the recreational bowling). The main reason being that having a bowling ball that is able to find the pocket will knock down more pins. Lastly, having a custom drill to your hand and finger size allows you to carry much more weight. I bowled a 16lb ball easily. The house balls at most bowling alleys drill enormous holes in the 15 and 16 lb balls so you have to give it a death grip to hold the ball.

nemo44x 5y ago
Modern bowling balls help a lot for strikes to be sure but a larger influence is the oil pattern on the lanes. Most places use a "house pattern" that looks like a "Christmas Tree" in that the oil pattern is nearly across the lane near the bowler and taper to a point in the center as it gets down the lane. This pattern helps the bowler a lot since shots that are thrown out too far (pushed) encounter a dry lane surface earlier and the ball can begin to find traction on the lane sooner so it has time to roll over and make its way into the pocket. Likewise if the shot is "pulled" the ball will skid on oil for a longer time before it finds traction and can roll over and thus have a better chance of finding the pocket and still maintain some angle to give a good chance of a strike. Professional bowlers do not use a "house shot" and in fact have multiple different oil patterns they use to make it more challenging. In general, a "reverse block" style pattern is used which means it is oily near the gutters and dryer near the center meaning imprecise shots are penalized harshly. But your typical bowling league doesn't have any incentive to use these types of oil patterns because everyone would be awful and not want to bowl there anymore and take their team to another house where they can score and enjoy themselves and delude themselves into thinking they could go pro. This is believed to have had a negative effect on professional bowling popularity as a spectator sport as many recreational bowlers roll high scores because of the easy shot and modern ball tech and aren't interested in watching pros who don't appear to be much better.

lmilcin 5y ago

I was always disappointed that I can't get the ball to curve. I now know a bunch of things need to be exactly perfect for this to be controllable or even happen at all. I no longer feel guilty on company bowling parties to just shoot straight:)

desmosxxx 5y ago
meh, just two finger hook grip it and you can spin any solid core ball. it's just not great for your wrist long term
nemo44x 5y ago
It's essentially impossible to hook a ball you get at the alley. They are made of polyester and just slide across the oil. You also don't have fingertip grips drilled in them. Pro's and bowling enthusiasts use the same type of ball (but fitted for their hand) for spares. You generally don't want a ball that can hook when trying to pick up a single pin. But strikes, a ball that can recover and angle towards the pocket and "roll over" right as it enters will store much of the energy you put into the ball and release it at just about the right time resulting in better strike odds.
- plorkyeran 5y ago
  It's not remotely close to impossible to hook a polyester house ball. You have to go out of your way to do it, but it's not even particularly difficult to get some movement.
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    I guess my point was to do it effectively and consistently in terms of scoring. I mean, serious bowlers and professionals use them specifically because they don't like to move.
- starky 5y ago
  Not true, if you get enough revs on the ball a urethane coverstock will curve no problem (IIRC most alley balls are urethane due to higher durability than polyester). Throw two handed with no thumb with your palm under the ball and axis rotation (i.e. the axis of rotation is at an angle to the direction the ball travels) and you will get significant curve.

mc32 5y ago

This story from a few months ago illustrated this[1]. It's the story of one of the main bowling-ball designers. A math student who becomes a bowling-ball designer. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27324564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27324564

romeoblade 5y ago

Bowling is my daughter and I’s weekly activity. We both just picked up our pro balls yesterday from the shop and tried them out. It’s a night and day difference from the house balls.

nemo44x 5y ago
Yes, just having a ball fit for your fingers is a huge difference. And not being made of plastic means you can actually get some angle from revving it. Keep them clean so they last awhile. Modern balls really soak up oil and should be cleaned after use.

irjustin 5y ago

Super cool stuff! While I had seen how it's made on... How It's Made - they show non-spherical cores[0], I hadn't known about the "Smooth Operator" as a benchmarking tool before competition. One of those industry things that are obvious once I know it, but semi-surprised to learn. I love How It's Made. [0] https://youtu.be/YAOX1ekylnQ?t=106 https://youtu.be/YAOX1ekylnQ?t=106

stronglikedan 5y ago
> I love How It's Made. I'm hoping that covid is the only reason they didn't make a 2020 season.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

unixhero 5y ago

This feel like a modification of the rules. EDIT: It is of course very cool.

SavantIdiot 5y ago
Don't look at modern bows used by olympic archers.

globular-toast 5y ago

> Precisely shaped, meticulously balanced weight blocks leverage the laws of physics to help skilled alley jockeys throw a strike on most rolls. This is why I've always considered "pro bowling" some kind of bad joke. What fun is there in a sport decided by someone making a tiny mistake and not getting a perfect score?

glasss 5y ago
I am probably going to get yelled at about this, but I would say other sports are similar in nature. Darts and golf come to mind.
brewdad 5y ago
It's also probably why I still enjoy college basketball but the NBA leaves me cold. The pro players are TOO good and most regular season games bore me.
starky 5y ago
I mean, shooting and archery would absolutely fall into the same category. In reality, Bowling is much more complicated than it appears at first glance. The lane is covered in a thin layer of oil in a specific pattern. The pattern greatly affects the difficulty of hitting the pocket at the right angle to get a strike (effectively your play surface is invisible). On top of this, the pattern changes as others bowl on it. So even when you know the correct line, in two frames you may have to change your shot a little to continue hitting strikes. The pattern of the oil greatly affects how difficult the game is. Most league bowlers bowl on a "house shot" which will have no oil on the outside of the lane and more on the inside, this can make the room for error to be 5-10 boards, due to this many good league bowlers average 220+. You take that same bowler and put them on a "sport" pattern, or a PBA pattern, and they would be lucky to shoot 170. Those patterns may mean the bowler has 1-2 boards of room to miss, and potentially if you miss any more than that your ball travels off course by a couple pins.

glasss 5y ago

It was fun learning about bowling ball cores from my fiance's father. He runs a little pro shop out of his garage. What was more interesting to me was the dual angle drilling technique he used, a fair bit of math involved: http://www.bowlersreference.com/Ball/Layout/Dual.htm http://www.bowlersreference.com/Ball/Layout/Dual.htm

neur4lnet 5y ago

This seems more like an advertisement than a popular science article, which is a huge shame as it's an interesting topic.

barbegal 5y ago
Unfortunately a lot of science journalism is now funded by this kind of advertisement. The magazine publishes the story as handed to them by the advertiser without the journalist doing any scrutiny. No money changes hands so it's perfectly legal not to label it as an advertisement.

micromacrofoot 5y ago

Makes shooting straight with a house ball much more interesting than pro bowling, IMO.

frettchen 5y ago

The article and comments together are great, because all at once I have a newfound respect for the complexity of bowling (from the cores to the oil patterns) and yet am bolstered in the feeling that there is something inherently casual about it, mostly because - and I cannot get over this - I had never even considered the possibility of _scented balls_. That seems like a weird joke, and yet many of these highly engineered and fairly expensive balls seem to not only be scented, but, for some, to come in a choice of scents (matching their colours to some degree).

acomjean 5y ago

Candlepin bowling was pretty much the only bowling I found in massachusetts growing up. No holes in the the significantly smaller bowling balls, no removing fallen pins between bowls. Its different, but has fallen out of favor as a lot of the local bowling alleys have closed and large chains have moved in. It always seemed like an easier bowling to get started with... I always thought those fancy curves of regular bowling were by crazy spins.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlepin_bowling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlepin_bowling

RickJWagner 5y ago

I'm a former bowling enthusiast, even bowling professionally at the regional level. The article is right, the weight block is important. But there is even more physics at play in the ball surface and the way the holes are placed. (Making the ball heavier in places relative to the part of the ball that is the 'track', where it rolls, can greatly change the way the ball behaves.) For those with an interest, read sometime about a man named 'Don McCune', who went from being a middle-grade bowler to the dominant professional almost overnight because he discovered how hardness of the ball surface is important.

starky 5y ago

This article is pretty crap, it really gives no insight into what a core does to the ball (mostly change the shape of how the ball curves, not how much). Like how does the article not make one mention of how the core causes the rotation of the ball to change as it spins to reveal clean coverstock (i.e. flare)? The article is purely Storm's marketing about what they say about different cores. Not to mention, the core has a relatively minor effect on the balls performance than the coverstock, yet that is barely alluded to in the article.

pontifier 5y ago

When I was researching robotics simulation I came across inertia tensors. Basically the way a rigid body rotates can be described by a simple mathematical 3x3 array that describes the mass distribution within the object. These designs are interesting, but despite the weird bulbs or internal fins, the values of the inertia tensors could be compared objectively if they were available. I wonder if there is an untapped market for both testing of existing balls and construction of new balls with precisely controlled inertia tensors. Eg. "Build me a ball just like this one, but with 3% more inertia around the z axis"