Bowling has been reinvented many times over the past seven thousand years but especially in the last 30. This is the fascinating physics of balls, oil, lane and pins. A portion of this video was sponsored by Salesforce. Go to https://salesforce.com/veritasium to learn more.

Huge thanks to Steve Kloempken and all of Storm Bowling for letting us visit and get a glimpse into the crazy world of bowling.
Huge thanks to legends Chris Barnes and Pete Weber for taking the time to bowl with us.
Huge thanks to Creative Electron for their help with getting the bowling balls X-rayed. Check out their work here: https://creativeelectron.com/
Thanks to Ron Hatfield and James Freeman for their help with research. Check out their great book, Bowling Beyond the Basics: https://ve42.co/HatfieldFreeman
Thanks to the United States Bowling Congress (USBC) and Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) for their help with accessing archival data and footage.
Special thanks to Rod Cross for physics consultation.
Thanks to Bill Guszczo for giving us the idea to make this video in the first place.

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References:
Freeman, James, and Ron Hatfield. Bowling beyond the Basics: What's Really Happening on the Lanes, and What You Can Do about It. BowlSmart, 2018. -- https://ve42.co/HatfieldFreeman
N. Stremmel, P. Ridenour and S. Sterbenz. “Identifying the Critical Factors That Contribute to Bowling Ball Motion on a Bowling Lane.” United States Bowling Congress, 2008. -- https://ve42.co/BallMotionASQ
USBC Equipment Specifications and Certification Team. “Ball Motion Study: Phase I and II Final Report.” United States Bowling Congress, 2008. -- https://ve42.co/USBCBallMotion
Brettingen, Patrick, and Nicki Mours. “USBC static weight limits remain relevant.” United States Bowling Congress, 2011. -- https://ve42.co/USBCStaticWeight
Article on lane oil origins -- https://ve42.co/OilOrigins
Luna, Richard. “Bruce Pluckhahn says there's a little bit of bowling…” United Press International Archives, 1984. -- https://ve42.co/BowlingHistory
Johnson, Brody D. “The Physics of Bowling: How good bowlers stay off the straight and narrow.” St. Louis University. -- https://ve42.co/JohnsonPhysicsPpt
Talamo, Jim. “The Physics of Bowling Balls.” -- https://ve42.co/TalamoPhysicsPpt
Thompson, Ted. “Breakdown and Carrydown - Then and Now.” Kegel. 2012. -- https://ve42.co/ThompsonKegel
Frohlich, Cliff. “What Makes Bowling Balls Hook?” American Journal of Physics, vol. 72, no. 9, 2004, pp. 1170–1177., https://doi.org/10.1119/1.1767099. -- https://ve42.co/FrohlichHook
Article on bowling’s ranking in participatory sports -- https://ve42.co/BowlingRank
Speranza, Dan, and Dave Nestor. “Initial Oil Absorption Results.” United States Bowling Congress, 2016. -- https://ve42.co/USBCOilAbsorption
D. Benner, N. Mours, and P. Ridenour. “Pin Carry Study: Bowl Expo 2009.” United States Bowling Congress, 2009. -- https://ve42.co/USBCPinCarry
Hopkins, D. C., and J. D. Patterson. “Bowling Frames: Paths of a Bowling Ball.” American Journal of Physics, vol. 45, no. 3, 1977, pp. 263–266., https://doi.org/10.1119/1.11005. -- https://ve42.co/HopkinsPath
Normani, Franco. “The Physics of Bowling.” Real World Physics Problems. -- https://ve42.co/NormaniPhysics
Horaczek, Stan. “The insides of pro bowling balls will make your head spin.” Popular Science, 2020. -- https://ve42.co/HoraczekSpin
House shot oil pattern -- https://ve42.co/HouseOil. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0.

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Special thanks to Patreon supporters: Andrew, Diffbot, Micah Mangione, MJP, Gnare, Nick DiCandilo, Dave Kircher, Edward Larsen, Burt Humburg, Blake Byers, Dumky, Evgeny Skvortsov, Meekay, Bill Linder, Paul Peijzel, Mac Malkawi, Michael Schneider, Big Badaboom, Ludovic Robillard, Jim buckmaster, fanime96, Juan Benet, Ruslan Khroma, Robert Blum, Richard Sundvall, Lee Redden, Vincent, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Alfred Wallace, Clayton Greenwell, Michael Krugman, Cy 'kkm' K'Nelson, Sam Lutfi, Ron Neal 

Written by Derek Muller and Emily Zhang
Animations by Mike Radjabov and Ivy Tello
Filmed by Derek Muller, Trenton Oliver, and Emily Zhang
Edited by Trenton Oliver
SFX by Shaun Clifford
Additional video supplied by Getty Images
Music from Epidemic Sounds
Produced by Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev, and Emily Zhang

A portion of this video was sponsored by Salesforce.

This is the biggest, most in-depth video about bowling ever.

How bowling balls are made, the best way to throw them, maximize strikes, how the lanes are oiled, what it takes to be a pro, and how this sport has continually been reinvented for literally thousands of years up to the present day.

This is the science of bowling, the most popular participatory sport in the United States.

I sent this ball to Creative Electron to get a 3D X-ray scan, and this is the result.

I always expected bowling balls to be, you know, perfect solid spheres, but there's something inside here and it's not symmetric and it's not even centered in the ball.

So I went to Storm Bowling, 1 of only 11 bowling ball manufacturers in the world to find out how bowling balls are made.

Yeah, basically when we make bowling balls, we always start in the center.

And the center part of the bowling ball is the weight block.

And as you can see, this is an example of an asymmetrical shape weight block.

So it's actually a different shape about the X, the Y, and the Z axes.

The weight blocks are embedded in a core of lightweight glass beads.

I feel like I have not felt anything this soft.

What's the difference in density between this sort of filler material and this core?

About 2 and a half to 3 times more dense in the inner weight block than it is in the core material.

If you were to look for example at this actual core, number 1 it says 960 which means that it weighs 9.60 pounds and then the description here underneath which is a 03 This indicates what type of a weight block is inside of it.

So this area right here is our urethane area.

So basically what we have are a number of different tanks that are set up.

So there's a chemical reaction that occurs once it actually fills the mold and we pour that coverstock material around the core.

It gets extremely hot in just a matter of minutes.

You go right down here, she's actually pouring the pin material inside the tops of those cores.

So you can see for this particular bowling ball, it's a bright orange type of a material and she's actually filling that hole with that plug material.

We've got the lathe right here which is where we take the balls that come out of the mold and then actually they spin almost 2000 RPMs on top of there.

There's the blades that come around And it actually makes the balls perfectly round.

Since the balls are not symmetric, they are heavier on 1 side than the other.

And you can see there the last 4 or 5 pumps of air, where it actually floats the air, then it stops and pauses, that the ball has completely settled.

And then basically a needle will come out from the bottom part, and all of a sudden it'll shoot up, and then it'll be where the center of gravity is on the surface of

When it comes right off the lathe, right here, it is extremely porous and very, very dull and there is a ton of friction between the ball and the lane at this point.

So every ball from right here will be smoothed up.

It's just a matter of how much it's going to be smoothed up in order to get what is the desired finish.

But before they can use these balls, they have to be drilled, but that is specific to each bowler.

We're making over 3, 000 balls in a day now that come out of this plant right here.

I found the bowling ball equivalent of clickbait.

Yeah, that's how you have to sell your stuff.

Well, Bowling seems to be an ancient game.

Archaeologists have found wall drawings of a sport that looks like bowling in an ancient Egyptian tomb dating back 7, 000 years.

In Germany, bowling was used as a religious ritual.

Pins represented your sins, so you're a good Christian if you could knock them all down.

Martin Luther himself was apparently a bowling fanatic and fixed the number of pins at 9.

When the game made its way over to America, nine-pin bowling was banned because it promoted gambling.

The legend goes that people cleverly came up with 10-pin bowling to get around the law.

Today in the US, 9-pin bowling is only played in Texas because it was the 1 state that didn't ban it, instead charging a tax.

Bowling lanes are about 3.5 feet wide and 60 feet long down to the headpin.

I'm using imperial units here because that's actually how they're defined.

The lane is made of 39 narrow boards that bowlers number for reference.

They used to be made of maple and pine wood, but these days most lanes are synthetic and made of fine particles coated with melamine resin.

1 game of bowling gives you 10 frames with 2 throws per frame to try to knock down all 10 pins.

The highest score you can get in a game without a strike is only 190.

But strikes allow you to double count your next 2 throws, so a perfect game with all strikes gives you a score of 300.

If you're anything like me, the whole game is just trying to throw the ball as straight as you can, down the middle of the lane, hit the head pin, and try to take as many other pins down with it as possible.

I've watched LeBron bowl, you won't be worse than him.

And I would normally be like reasonably happy with a shot like that.

But for pro bowlers like Pete Weber or Chris Barnes, the game is different.

And not just because they are way better than me.

Hitting the headpin square on is not the perfect strategy.

If you hit the headpin square on going straight, you're unlikely to knock down all the pins.

You could end up with a split where the ball goes through the middle or with the ball deflecting off to 1 side after hitting the head pin.

Chances for a strike are much higher if the center of the ball hits the pins just to 1 side of the head pin, boards 17 and a half.

In which case, the ball takes out the 135, and 9 pins, which take out the others.

So we want the ball to hit the 1 pin, the 3, the pin behind the 1, which is the 5 pin, and then the 9 or the 8 and the 9.

You want the ball to hit all of those pins.

Now the pins don't always fall this way, but the pin shape helps.

Pins roll in circles like eggs, which help knock down the others.

But to have an over 90% chance of getting a strike, the center of the ball has to hit with an error smaller than half a board.

Needless to say, throwing a ball 60 feet straight at a target smaller than a dime is a tough task, especially to do it consistently.

Now if we look at the pins, and as you look at them from here, from straight on, The spot between the head pin, the 1 that's in the center, and the 3 pin, which is just right at that, that gap's pretty narrow.

But as the ball hooks more, now we basically shift over, and now that space is considerably wider.

If you can hit the pins not head on, but at an angle of 6 degrees, you dramatically increase your chances of knocking them all down.

The ball can be coming in anywhere from board 17 to 18.5.

That is a board and a half of room, and that still gives you greater than a 90% chance of a strike.

Now, 6 degrees may not sound like a lot, but it's actually extremely difficult to hit.

The problem is, if you wanted to throw the ball straight at the pins and hit them at 6 degrees, you would have to be bowling from 3 quarters over on the next lane.

And that is impossible, what with the 2 gutters in between and all.

So the solution is you've got to curve the ball on 1 lane.

So if you got it under your hand and the ball's underneath and you're trying to spin it, that's basically the motion that players use these days.

This really became a big part of the sport by accident.

The wood gets beat up with the damage from all the balls going into it.

And so they basically created slip agents, lubricants, much like oil on a car, so that the lanes didn't get damaged so quickly.

So the original idea was to protect the wood?

The original idea was just to protect the surface of the lane.

It was not to manufacture anything from a competitive scoring type environment.

But applying oil to protect the wood meant that balls no longer gripped the lane and rolled without slipping down to the pins.

Instead they could skid, rotating not in their direction of travel.

Now, I've been to a lot of bowling alleys before making this video, and I noticed it was a bit greasy, but I always thought that was just the nature of bowling alleys, like the stinky rental shoes.

I didn't know they intentionally put oil on the lanes.

Vox has a great video specifically about oil patterns.

These days, there are machines specifically for applying oil to the lanes.

And then as proprietors went, Huh, well, yeah, it does make the ball skid.

Well, if I put more in the middle than the outside, well, my bowlers bowl a little bit better and they're happier.

And then as technology advances, like everything does, now we have $30, 000 lane machines that can put a specific amount of oil on each board.

They work kind of like dot matrix printers.

They can lay the oil on with varying degrees of thickness across the lane and extend the oil pattern different distances.

There are hundreds of different patterns that can be used.

Usually the oil extends about two-thirds the way down the lane, so to around 40 or 45 feet.

But there's always a dry patch of wood before the pins that increases the friction with the ball, getting it to start rolling without slipping.

And this leads to the 3 parts of any pro bowler's throw.

When a bowler releases the ball, it can be going 20 miles an hour and spinning at 500 RPM.

That's nearly 10 full revolutions per second.

Right-handers typically throw the ball to the right on the lane while spinning it to the left.

During the skid phase the ball slides down the lane spinning but not rolling.

As it comes to the end of the oil the friction increases and the ball accelerates to the left.

It hooks because of its spin and the spin starts lining up with the direction of travel leading to stage 3, roll.

The ball is rolling without slipping as it barrels into the pins.

Ideally, as close to that 6 degree angle as possible.

Like the ball starts on the left side of the lane, goes straight across almost right most, then hooks like at the last minute, rolls in there.

So that's almost like a perfect shot, Right?

Yeah, that's where you want to hit the pins, yeah.

My very first game, it was ABC back then, American Bowling Congress.

I filled out the application to bowl in men's league.

Dad gave me the letter saying that I could.

Actually, my first, my sixth, My ninth, my 13th, 17th, 20th, we're all 300 games.

I had like 7 or 8 300s in my first year of men's league.

To shoot 300, you have to get lucky somewhere along the line.

It came in to hit the 1359 and that that's what we call the perfect shot.

That yell and the purple, they're almost exactly on top of each other.

That 1, the purple 1 was just a little bit higher on the head pin, but it still hit the 1, 3, and the 5, and the 9.

This type of throw is only possible because of the oil.

If you try to throw a ball the same way on an unoiled lane,

Can I actually ask you to bowl like you normally would, but on the dry lane?

No oil, it's going to hit the lane and go in the left gutter.

You're going to throw it just like it's a regular lane.

As soon as it hits the lane, it's going to start hooking.

You know, because if you do this, who's going to want to bowl on this?

If we didn't have oil, this is what it would be and nobody would have fun.

For pro bowlers, the oil on the lane is a key part of the game.

Do you like look at the oil or are you trying to scope it out or are you just kind of guessing?

You know, I know some guys that are, you know, they get down like this and they're looking and it's like, well, you know, they're seeing the same thing I do when I sit down and I go like that.

Whether you can see it or not, figuring out the condition of oil on the lane can make the difference between a strike and a miss.

As the game wears on, the bowling balls move the oil around, pushing it further down the lane and stripping it off the most common paths.

So players have to adjust to the changing conditions.

Some people say left-handers have an advantage because, well, right-handers aren't playing on their side of the lane.

At most bowling alleys, they use a pattern of oil that is thicker in the middle and thinner out toward the edges.

This is a forgiving layout because balls that drift too far out start to hook earlier while balls going straighter can continue down the lane for longer before making their turn into the pins.

But for pro bowlers the oil conditions vary and players have to adjust their games to the conditions.

Some people seem to think that like, league bowlers are better than they are maybe, because they say like, oh this league bowler can shoot 210, and I just saw a pro shoot

That's why they call it league, because you bowl on the same shot every week.

Because each week on tour, I'm bowling on a different condition.

We have cheetah, chameleon, scorpion, shark, there's 1 more in there.

But it's not just the oil on the lanes that has transformed bowling.

Hard rubber bowling balls was what I started with, maybe mid-70s, and then the yellow dot, the Columbia yellow dot, which is a plastic ball.

And then they came out with urethane bowling balls.

I won a lot of titles with the urethane stuff.

And then they come out with the reactive resin bowling balls.

Reactive resin is just a modified polyurethane with a more porous surface, which gives it more grip in the oil.

It's the most popular surface or coverstock for bowling balls today.

Balls started out as perfect symmetrically weighted spheres.

And when you go to a bowling alley, the house balls there are still just that.

But when you drill holes in the ball, you take some weight out of 1 side.

So to rebalance it, ball manufacturers added a small pancake weight on the same side as the holes.

But then ball manufacturers got the idea they could add different weights inside the ball to improve their performance.

You can have 2 balls that look identical from the outside, weigh exactly the same amount, and yet roll differently.

If the mass is more concentrated around the axis of rotation, say you have a dense cylinder inside the ball, well then it has a lower moment of inertia.

This means for the same amount of energy input, it will spin faster.

In bowling, they prefer to talk about an analogous concept, radius of gyration, or RG.

If you were to concentrate the entire mass of the ball onto a hoop with the same moment of inertia, its radius would be the radius of gyration.

So smaller radius of gyration just means lower moment of inertia, which translates into more rotation that a bowler can get on the ball.

And then somebody finally did a study and it turns out, yeah, it's like 8% for every .05.

And so depending on what your rubber rate is, it can be fairly significant.

An ability to spin the balls faster gives a bowler the ability to hook the ball more sharply further down the lane, giving them a better chance of achieving that 6 degree entry angle.

What was amazing for me to learn is that the weight blocks in these balls aren't even centered.

There's a heavy side and a lighter side on purpose.

You can find and mark this side by letting the ball spin freely on a cushion of air until it comes to rest heavy side down.

They showed me a great demonstration of how the position of the center of gravity can affect the movement of the ball.

When the center of mass is on the left side of the ball, it pulls in the same direction as the spin, helping the ball hook to the left into the pins.

Same exact ball, same numbers, just different.

But here is a flipped bowling ball where the center of mass is on the right.

Now the ball starts to hook into the left, but at the end something weird happens.

The center of mass pulls it over to the right.

This effect is only really noticeable when the ball is thrown slowly.

These days, there are tons of different weight blocks that go inside bowling balls, and they can be grouped into 2 categories, symmetric and asymmetric.

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How Hidden Technology Transformed Bowling