BOWLING

Down the street from my house is Aiea Shopping Center. Over the summer, my friends and I often went there. At Aiea Shopping Center there are many yummy food places such as Samurai, Jamba Juice, Ice Garden, and Koa's Pancake. However, after eating all those food, we needed to do something to lose those calories. Luckily, there is a bowling place. Although I am a horrible bowler, never reaching 100 points, I noticed the physics of the bowling ball and the pins. When the bowling ball hits the pins, the pins all erupt into chaos, also known as "pin action." The bowling ball has an original velocity, but after encountering the pin, the ball loses some of its velocity, but still continues to roll forward, as some of that energy transfers to the pin. Because the pin has a smaller mass than the bowling ball, the pin undergoes a greater change of velocity then the bowling ball does. Pin action occurs due to elastic collisions. Elastic collisions are always bouncy and both momentum and kinetic energy are conserved, represent by the equations m1v1i + m2v2i = m1v1f + m2v2f and v1 -v2 = v2f - v1f. Once the bowling ball hits some pins, those pins hit other pins and etc, hopefully leading to a strike! In addition, the pins also bounce off one another as momentum is conserved.  In order to achieve the best pin action, the bowler must put a lot of energy into the system and hit the pins a certain way to distribute the kinetic energy efficiently. 

Me bowling! The high ball is a distinct feature of how I bowl 

Smiling, even though I'm probably losing