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Physics Of Bowling

Good Essays

Kyle Yatsonsky
Dr. Croom
Physics
30 May 2015
The Physics of Bowling Bowling is a fun filled pastime with a lot more to it than what meets the eye. Some of the concepts involved are energy, momentum, forces, velocity, acceleration, and center of mass. The ultimate goal of a bowler is to knock down as many pins as he can. To successfully do this, a bowler needs to first consider the trajectory in which his ball travels down the lane. Energy is a system’s “ability to do work.”(Elert) The unit for energy is joules. Some other characteristics of energy are that it takes numerous forms and that it is a scalar quantity.(Elert) The two types of energy are kinetic energy and potential energy. Kinetic energy refers to an object’s motion. This differs …show more content…

Momentum’s equation is mass times velocity. The equation itself is expressed as p=mv with m and v being mass and velocity, but p stands for momentum. It is a vector quantity, which “is a quantity that is fully described by both magnitude and direction.”(Henderson) Whereas energy is not always conserved such as the case with bowling, momentum is always conserved. This means that the initial momentum of a system equals the output momentum of the system. The initial momentum in a game of bowling would be the mass of the ball times its velocity. Although there are ten pins, they are stationary making their momentum zero. Slight variations exist for the different kinds of momentum. In bowling, momentum is inelastic some “kinetic energy is changed to some other forms of energy in the collision.”(Wood) Going hand and hand with inelastic collisions is that the objects move in the same direction. If they are stuck together it would be a perfectly inelastic collision, but in the case for bowling, the ball and pins do not stick together so it is For example of a 10 kg bowling ball were traveling down the lane at ten meters per second the momentum of the system is 100 kgxm/s. In this situation assume the mass of the pins to be 2 kg each. So total the pins would weigh 20 kg. What would the velocity of the pins be if the bowling ball travels 5 meters per second after the collision? The final momentum of the ball is 50. …show more content…

The greater angle optimizes the number of pins that the ball will knock down. The way that the bowler controls this is in the manner in which he grasps the ball. It is dependent on the position that the bowler places his fingers and thumb. Rotational velocity is the main feature. The importance of rotational velocity is from the precession it provides the ball with. Precession “is the change in direction of the bowling balls spin vector… over time” (Physics Of Bowling.) Increasing precession leads to the domino effect. That is increasing amount of friction on the ball, so the hook that the ball strikes the pins is also greater. By default there is a greater angle for the bowling

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