The insides of pro bowling balls (2020) | Hacker News Reader

The insides of pro bowling balls (2020)

popsci.com

42 pointsthrowup23824 comments

Seems to me like bowling rules could use an update. When every pro is so good that they are just competing on mental focus, the nature of the ball, and slight environmental factors like the changing slickness of the wood, it has ceased to become compelling competition. I’d love to see some kind of dynamic interaction between the players: e.g. if you hit your 3 pin, it gets added to the opposing player. Something like that.

I suppose this goes for all sports of this kind where the players actions don’t affect each other.

I'm not sure the general public are ready for Bowling meets Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo but I like the idea.

I was thinking something more like Thunderdome with audience participation.

Two men enter, two bloody flying pins leave.

Isn't that how the "old" style pinsetters work? That sound is amazing though :)

> just competing on mental focus

Ahem: snooker, darts, golf, test match cricket, tennis. To varying degrees with these sports, at the top tier, mastery of the skill is merely the table stakes. The winners are the ones who can do so under immense pressure.

The difference in how good two pro bowlers are is often fractions of a percent.

Maybe a step back in technology would make the sport more interesting.

I think that can be said for a bunch of stuff like pool, snooker, darts, golf, and bowling.

Add most ISSF bullseye rifle to that list.

(Not to knock the people who do that vs less high tech bullseye disciples, because they're also definitely better - they clean house in the lower tech competitions too)

I'm reminded of an excerpt from Ian Banks culture series, the game player one (player of games?). Really good games need some element of random, not just pure skill+gear.

ISSF is trying to gamify the finals for bullseye competitions, and it's... well it's a thing. Idk if it's good, but it's probably more entertaining for the bundesliga cheering people

I just wish they would use real rifles. I don't get the point of target shooting with air rifles. Dealing with the characteristics of an actual gun is a core part of marksmanship.

To me, competing in target shooting with an air rifles is like competing in a marathon using a treadmill.

This is probably stating the obvious but being able to compete with low energy rifles is a must for inclusivity in the sport. Gas rifles are legal and available everywhere.

The limit in the UK is 12 foot pounds for an air rifle. Oddly, comparing that with a bow (draw weight of 40 pounds firing a 30” arrow) makes archery seem pretty lethal.

Yup this is exactly it. As more countries limit civilian gun ownership, the ISSF has followed to keep participation at the international level broader. At some point I imagine 50m 3p will get replaced by 3p air - 50m prone is already gone from Olympics.

There are a few places where 300m ISSF is still done, like Switzerland, but it's dwindling. Even in the US, high power bullseye is much less common than smallbore/air, because there's no terminal college or international goal.

From a precision standpoint, the air rifles are also much more exact for cheaper. 10m air rifle is insanely difficult.

And also let's be honest, bullseye is a weird mental game that most people don't like anyways. So anyone in the US doing gun-competition-for-fun is doing USPSA or similar.

If you want to do high power bullseye, there's still a handful of people left doing it.

This reminds me of USA MLB players' optimization for home-run hits over time. I guess a strike is essentially the "home run" of bowling.

Yeah and the league hates it, so they deadened the ball two years back. Just enough that close homers would go for fly outs but not enough to change the math so players would change their approach.

Also, if you’re Mookie Betts, you’re big on both

I wonder what would happen, probably they will add string pin setters to the rules.

The insides of pro bowling balls - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28073317 - Aug 2021 (50 comments)

I don't know how 'pro' they are, but also:

How Bowling Balls Are Made [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35581792 - April 2023 (14 comments)

One man’s journey to the center of the bowling ball - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27324564 - May 2021 (14 comments)

Derek from Veritasium has a decent video on this topic that seems to be less corporate: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aFPJf-wKTd0

More interesting as advertising gimmickry than physics.

I get that sense as well. I really have to wonder how much of this alleged technology actually affects performance and how much is woo-woo nonsense -- so long as the bowling ball is a rigid body, the only relevant factors should be its weight, its center of mass, and its moments of inertia around a few axes. Putting weird swirls and ripples into the core won't meaningfully affect that.

> the only relevant factors should be its weight, its center of mass, and its moments of inertia around a few axes.

I believe the single biggest factor is which material the outer cover is made from. House balls don’t hook much because they usually just use a plastic cover which doesn’t grip very well.

"meaningfully" might be different for someone at the pro level.

Sort of how for most people, the limitation of driving fast on a twisty road is the person, not the car.

For as hyperbolic as a headline can be, this was honestly pretty wild!

I had absolutely no idea bowling balls were anything other than solid pieces of… whatever material they are on the surface.

Largely same - I wonder if such complexly engineered balls is why bowling has a falloff in popularity as a pro sport. The difference in how good two pro bowlers are is often fractions of a percent. Maybe a step back in technology would make the sport more interesting.

I can't wait for a cheating scandal where the balls are "active" and a computer inside steers it.

World's First Automatic Strike Bowling Ball (Mark Rober) in 2019 ... https://youtu.be/wM5NHC97JBw

Building Mark Rober's Bowling Ball (James Bruton) ... https://youtu.be/eI33iAXcEYA

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