The Hidden Physics Equations in Bowling with Neil deGrasse Tyson & Dr. Dave Alciatore

[Music] this is star talk sports edition neil degrasse tyson you're a personal astrophysicist and sports enthusiast but i'm not enough to hold this show i need my co-host gary former professional footballer in the uk hi nielsen welcome back to the show dude thank you yeah and how long have you been in the united states um depends who you ask i think it ranges from two to two the real the real question is how long have you been here legally i have always been here legally so okay that's that's the good news and that other voice popped up chuck nice always good to have you man always good to be here i just want to say absolutely nothing i was delighted to host your family for the weekend and when we did one early morning you asked me for a jump rope you went over to the side and you worked out with a jump rope and i was so impressed by that only to then realize you never really did any sports your whole life yes um however double dutch is a sport is that in the olympics we're going to see that in paris yeah i think double judge requires three people chuck you can't double dutch with yourself that's how good i am so gary what do you have in store for us today okay this would be interesting if not fascinating ten pin bowling they say right but bowling to get a perfect game means you score over 300. which is regular you said 10 pin that's just regular bowling right that's 10 pin bowling as opposed to crown green bowling which is done on grass and all the others there you go so if you have an average over 200 it's considered as an accurate indicator of a misspent use right it's also it's also an indicator that this person may well understand more physics than you think imagine right yes they're on the lane with the ball in hand you're discussing euler's equations of motion whilst chewing the fat about radius of gyration all whilst wearing some dang ugly shoes that don't fit too good and it's actually said chuck and you'll love this if you learn to read the oil patterns in the lane you could find yourself with the cheat codes for a perfect game and we must get into how that can work out for us i love it yeah i mean i haven't played i haven't bowled in many many years primarily because it's become a place where yuppies go to drink it used to be you know like i used to be in a league saturday morning you went out you bowled it was great now you can't get elaine cause it's a bunch of yuppies sitting around day drinking well is yuppie still even a word is the language oh they they're still they're still around i know they still exist is it a word you're right no you're right you're right you're not no no neil you're right they're not yuppies anymore they're hipsters oh okay yeah i'm sorry i got it yeah they're hipsters okay so gary who who who do you have who possibly has this kind of expertise well surprisingly enough he's a guest who's been on before we knew him as yes dr dave the pool hustler he's now going he's going to return today as dr dave lord of the lanes um because he he has some serious chops he's bought a perfect game he has he still has an average over 200 and you know what even i could work out he was the guy to talk to okay dave welcome back to star talk thanks neil it's great to be back oh my gosh i love quote dr dave i love that just it's just it's it's affectionate it's more affection than just dave you know dr dave so you recently retired professor emeritus you don't look that old at colorado state university got your phd in mechanical engineering at ut austin and i met my wife at ut austin by the way uh the woman who would become my wife and you you've got your own youtube channel and facebook page dedicated to pool we knew that but also to billiards so so you're the man you demand and so let me ask you in your misspent childhood how did polling become part of this as well well my my early life dream was to be the doctor dave of bowling instead of the doctor day of a fool because yeah i grew up i basically grew up in a bowling alley my my mom worked at a bowling alley and luckily that bowling alley also had a pool hall in it so we just was just bliss heavenly bliss for me even as a child so which are you better at um i'm probably uh people probably consider me a little bit better in the billiards but but i'm a strong bowler as well what constitutes a strong bowler i mean it would have to come down to the numbers of your average yeah of course what is the average that creates a strong boulder anything over 200 like gary mentioned is is considered strong but you know i've averaged close to 220 i'm averaging about 220 right now partly because i've got a brand new bowling ball which we're going to talk about later that's something boost my average oh man that means you got the fingers drilled for yourself that's a good feeling you take the ball and it's just a big ball it's it's a sphere and you got to go in and they drill the holes just for you it's so so dave uh in my uh engineering physics classes i remember learning all about sort of euler angles and sort of the geometry of a rotating coordinate system and my notes here tell me that uh euler euler is a famous british mathematician from a century gone by that you somehow invoke euler equations to goal of 300 i i you got to get me get me on that same page here please honestly i don't use the math when i bowl but the math does affect the physics on the lane uh the euler's equations or oil oil did many things but one thing he contributed to dynamics is the euler's equations of motion that describe gyroscopic effects and these new bowling balls take advantage of these gyroscopic effects wow and i'm going to be very honest because i don't care when i look ignorant because it happens all of the time i i thought the oiler lanes were the greasy spots on the floor i actually i actually thought maybe there are slick spots on the lane itself okay e-u-l-e-r all you look i had no idea or maybe oiler maybe orler was the first guy that oiled the lane so they called him the oiler right exactly so it's euler eu lear okay yes so so here's an interesting an interesting observation and then i'll i'll pass over to because because gary is is going to drill you for the whole hour we got here so so um what i remembered most about the euler equations in my sort of engineering physics was normally when we think of something rotating we think of only one axis and so earth is rotating or or a top is rotating that is spinning but if you have rotation in more than one axis simultaneously then interesting things happen right so so so here's the ball trying to roll down the lane and so that's an axis of rotation it's rolling but then you put a little spin on it on top of the rolling that's happening and so the ball doesn't go in a straight line it curves so are you telling me you thought all this out and you and really really and it's not just practice well to play the game well it's all about practice but uh you know good bowlers take advantage of the oil patterns which we can talk about and the boil the ball manufacturers take advantage of these gyroscopic effects see if you had a homogeneous ball a solid sphere it has holes in it but let's forget that for now and you spin it and you throw it down the lane it's gonna spin on the same circumference the whole way down the lane and this is actually uh this is actually directly from billiards when we looked at the massey shock a massey shot in billiards is the same as a curveball in in bowling all right now if the ball is a sphere a solid sphere when it's when it's trying to curve it's spinning and uh coriolis figured out that that the direction of the friction does not change during the curve same thing in a on a pool table so what that what that uh suggests is that a stripe of oil is going to build up on that ball along one circumference you get a circle of oil building up on the ball as it's traveling down the lane now that's bad because the oil is slick well he's good so he is literally talking about oil chuck there is oil on the lanes it's actually a petroleum product it's not crude oil it's actually mineral oil based but it's a very very clean looking oil but it's it's slick okay so so chuck you were even wrong in your ignorance that's pretty bad yeah well you know what can you say this is where i'm at this is where i'm a viking meal okay you got to be good at something okay even if it's good at being wrong dave so i mean we've got multiple axis of rotation and that's all happening but to drive this apart from the bowler themselves you've got a weight block inside now they come in eight different shapes and they're not all asymmetrical they're offset as well aren't they yes so how is that then impacting on these euler's equations of motion and uh how how the ball does its thing that's the critical piece here so again if you have that solid ball that doesn't have this weight block in it it builds up the striper oil now the oil is not consistent over the whole length of the lane they put most of the oil at the in the first two thirds of the lane the last third is mostly dry it has a little bit of oil that's where most of the curve occurs in the last third of the lane but if the ball is picking up oil the whole way down the lane it's going to slide more during that curve section all right so these weight blocks it's asymmetric as neil's pointed out if you have a ball you're spinning at about one axis it's moving down the lane friction is creating a torque or moment about another axis that causes this weird wobbling effect the ball actually does this weird wobble thing you can see me on video what i'm doing but it gives you like different circles of oil on the ball so that new ball surface is touching the lane the whole way down so it doesn't build up oil on one stripe and when it hits the drier part of the lane it has has virgin virgin olive oil it has a virgin oil-free surface to uh to help it curve more so dave let me get if i understand this correctly the first part of the journey of the bowl is on oily oilier it's an oilier surface than the last section yes so where it's oily you're not going to get much friction to curve the path is that correct bengal okay so i always wondered why the ball curve more in the last i've seen this and i never understood why so that's why it breaks hard it breaks harder right yeah bowlers call that the back end you want to have a strong back end where it curves hard and and creates a good entry angle into the pins which we can talk about later also if we've spent enough time and and sort of examine bowling and come to the conclusion that euler's equations and motions are involved surely now there has to be an optimal speed an optimal angle of approach because otherwise i'm sticking that straight in the gutter and we've got this configuration of pins this triangular configuration and we've all seen it what's it a seven and a ten split where one the two furthest pins away from each other are left and you've got a spare to try and clear them up so how do i get out of that by using a bit of science by thinking right there's an optimal speed there's an optimal angle of approach or am i daydreaming again no you're right on right on topic let's talk about the pin numbering briefly because i'm going to refer to them at times so the pins are in a triangle pattern the headpin the one in front is called the one pin the number it's so so surprising right then the number this is surprising too the next row is two and three and it goes four five six and it goes seven eight nine ten good all right so gary just mentioned the 710 split that's a boiler's a bowler's nightmare you have the the far two pins in the corners uh that you leave as a spare and it's pretty much impossible to convert but but it can be made mostly through luck but let's getting back getting back to a strike how does a bowler give themselves the best chance of getting a strike you might think throw it right down the middle and hit that head pin right in the center well that's the worst possible thing you can do but that's what most beginner bowlers try they try to throw it in the middle i think a gutter shot is worse than hitting the front i'm just you know of all the worst things you could do i'm thinking the gutter shot is worse but go on that's right but if you throw it straight you want it to hit off center slightly that's how you can get a strike but the problem is when it comes in straight the ball deflects off the pins a little too much and it doesn't have enough power to drive through the center and you often leave what's called the five pin the one in the middle or sometimes you'll leave a 10 pin on the far corner because the ball is not coming in strong enough to send the other pins toward the 10. all right so bowler they want to come in at an exact six degree entry angle all right this isn't random wow extensive testing extensive testing lots of simulation that was my problem i was coming in at seven degrees the whole thing and i was five and a half you know neal that's your problem man that's your problem seven degrees it's not six it's nice oh oh my god yeah you you were doing seven-minute abs you might think a bigger angle is better like you might think if i can get seven isn't that better than six well at some point it's coming into the into the pins a little too steep and it just kind of kind of tunnels through and doesn't doesn't spread them as well so people have found this six degree angle to be kind of optimal it sounds like a small angle but you have to curve it a fair amount because it's only curving in that last part of the lane and the lane is really long and skinny so you get an angle you have to curve it significantly yeah and and is that the pocket that you always hear them talking bingo for a right-hander it's called the one the one three pocket you're hitting the one and three pins at the first and it's also called the manhattan side you don't want to go to the brooklyn side that's kind of embarrassing to a good [Laughter] the bowler came from you know people in manhattan they have to cross over the bridge to get to brooklyn right all right so now cross over because inside the headpin you're hitting the left side that means you weren't very accurate you're hitting on the brooklyn side we call it so is the gutter the jersey side now what's going on so what what if i just get brute force and ignorance to start bowling and just barrel one down there is it would it just be simple enough to just say it's velocity or are we into spin rates and you know if i want to get this angle of approach and we're playing with a lane that isn't uniform from start to finish you bring up a good point because that entry angle is critical but the other critical thing is momentum you know the weight of the ball and the speed of the ball both contribute to the to the to your pin action how well you you bust up those pins so if you can throw a heavier ball faster it's going to help assuming you can get that angle which is harder the faster you throw it the more difficult the more difficult it is to curve it enough to get that angle uh but if you can if you can spin a lot so bowlers want a lot of rev rate you know uh good bowlers top pros they can they can spin the ball almost 10 revolutions a second so it's a pretty fast spin yeah so you want to spin it as much as you can so you can throw it as fast as you can and still get that six degree entry angle that's the that's the secret sauce of bowling are you are you saying that if a person is weaker they have to use a lighter bowling ball and all other things being equal they will not be as successful at bowling because they're using a ball with less mass now some pros you know 16 pounds is the maximum allowed weight and for for many years all pros use 16 pounders but now they're migrating closer to 15 and you might think well why they're giving up that that free momentum well they can throw the 15 ball 15 pound ball faster okay so they can actually get and they can spin it more so it's a trade-off between the kinetic energy of its speed and the momentum you get from its mass i guess there's two of those uh well again the main thing you want is momentum you want you want mass or weight and you want speed you want here's something that i thought was happening and maybe not and then we'll take a quick break and we'll come back and pick this up some more uh does the spin they're picking up on what gary said does the spin of the ball other than altering its direction of impact does it help uh knock a pin sideways better rather than bowl it down forward and help to create more sideways action helping you get those side pins a little better does that is that a thing uh not really because most most most bowling shots you have three three kind of phases you have the slide phase which is spinning like mad but sliding through the oil very little friction it's curving just a slight amount then you have the uh the curve phase where the friction is really grabbing and it's changing the direction of the ball and during that curve phase it's actually losing that's the side spin and when it's done with the curve phase it's actually mostly rolling mostly rolling in a straight line at the desired angle at the end so it has very little excess spin left over when it's supposed to forget that of course if you're spinning it and it's responding to that spin by friction it's slowing down that spin of course yes okay guys we got to take a quick break but when we come back more on how to bowl a 300 and 10 pin bowling on star talk sports edition we're back star talk sports edition we're talking about bowling how to be good at bowling no how to be perfect at bowling there is such a thing as perfect ebola 300 and our special guest today dr dave alcitor did i pronounce your name correctly sir uh right on right for the french side of my family but the italian side of my family likes i'd way prefer that but i don't want to offend the french side um dr dave we've had you on before talking about billiards and that was a fascinating show one of my favorites and only to learn that you have further expertise because part part of your childhood you grew up in a pool hall because your mother worked there that that meant you play you grew up in a billiard hall which also had pool tables but that meant you you got free games that probably what that meant oh yeah so maybe you're good maybe you're good at bowling because you played for free not because you actually studied the equations now fess up it yeah it can you tell me i got a free ride neil you're talking about man confess your privileges here right this is what we got to do so so tell me more you mentioned this oil on the you know none of us are thinking that there's oil on the none of us non-experts are thinking that anyway could you just give us a little more details about why is there oil there and how you come to exploit that fact and why don't you guys just get a rad okay well there is there is a former rag in the automated machine that puts down the oil this is a computerized machine that puts the oil down in certain patterns and it's not always the same pattern typically in a league situation they give us a fairly easy pattern an easy pattern is where most of the oil is in the middle and then the oil doesn't go down a lane as far all right that's the optimal situation uh and one reason is if you throw the ball across the oil like from the left if you're right-handed you'll start to the left a little bit if you throw it across the oil it goes out if you throw it out too far it gets to the dry part of the lane sooner and then it curves more right if you don't throw it out far enough it stays in the oil and slides and that's how you optimize your chances to get a strike you have strategy based on how the oil is put down you throw it out you mean the distance between where you release the ball and where it hits the wood well that is one variable that some people adjust but mostly i mean you're throwing it more to the right if you're right-handed and you throw it more to the right it hits the drier part of the lane sooner and that left to curve sooner and you can still get a strike you throw it too far to the left it stays in the oil and does it and doesn't curve as much and you can still get a strike so you can be sometimes if you're if you have your optimal strategy for the oil pattern and you're throwing it in the best possible place you give yourself the widest margin for error sometimes as much as like six inches six to ten inches you can be off by that much and still get a strike and and how how much does alcohol come into play when making these calculations mentally well people that tend to get tense alcohol is actually a a booster because it helps them relax a little bit but that only works for to a point and then there's there's a difference between perceived and actual performance chuck of course yeah yeah that alcohol makes you makes you perceive performance amazing right you think you're clear clearly you've been to one of my comedy shows that's right so gary he's all yours gary all right so i have to i have to imagine now i'm bowling but the pattern of oil that's been laid down in the lane isn't fixed it's going to change that every time a bowl goes down it so now i've got an organic situation that's changing in front of me so is it is it kind of like a major cheat code once i learn how to read the pattern read the oil movement as balls bowls go down it and then distribute oil in different places on the lane well there's three things there gary one is you have to know what the pattern of oil is you know they put down different patterns on different different lanes or in pro tournaments they actually put down a different pattern on each of the two lanes that they're bowling on just to make it more challenging and they have sometimes they use a totally different ball enzymes they stand in a totally different place and throw it with a totally different speed and direction on each of those two lanes that's the ultimate challenge but again in a league they're putting down pretty much the same pattern for us every week and you know i've learned to find the optimal way to throw the ball to give myself the best chance of getting a high score and how many balls how many balls are you able to use if you're playing like a real tournament game can you say okay for my spares i'm gonna have a lighter ball or a heavier ball uh for my first throw i'm gonna use a lighter ball and then i have my second lane ball i mean are what are there rules no there's no limits on the number of balls you can use in fact the pro they might have it might sound ridiculous but they might have like 15 to 20 balls at you know available and they might change balls in the middle of a match you know if it's not working out if they're really they're reading something in the oil pattern that that they didn't anticipate so there's no limit on number balls so imagine carrying a golf ball a golf a golf bag a golf bag full of these bowling balls around wow yeah but typically most league bowlers they have like uh their their strike ball their curveball and they have a spare ball spare ball is usually made out of a hard plastic that has very little friction very smooth surface even if you can and the beauty of that is you can throw it your normal way that you throw a strike shot which is your most consistent throw and it's spinning like like heck but it just goes straight this doesn't go uh to get that spare yes so how do you know once you get to the back end of the lane that you've got certain things going on with the oil distribution on the surface how how do you how do you tell you know you you're not allowed to walk down there and look at it or can you read it from the way the balls are moving the last thing gary all right so let me go back so first you have to know what what the what the pattern of the oil is that they're putting down then you have to know how does that pattern change uh over time as you throw balls because the ball is picking up oil when it's going down that slick part of the lane and that oil is so so you're actually removing a little oil from the first part of the lane and in that it's carrying that oil down so as the night goes on as the games go on and the oil is getting pushed down the lane and it's getting pushed in the area that that your ball is curving all right so it tends to give you less curve as the night goes on in that area all right so a good bowler has to adjust they can't see the oil like you pointed out gary they have to adjust based on what based on the reaction of the ball so when the ball is starting to come in light we say it's it's not curving as much we would typically move our feet to the left and aim a little bit to the left that way we're hitting fresh oil and we're hitting fresh dry lane down down the last third of the lane yeah so you've got to have a lot of experience to be able to read the oil patterns on the lane and then have the knowledge to know what will happen but if they change this but you just said they changed the oil patterns as well so just to make it in the middle of the game they're just they start with different starter patterns right what i'm saying before the game do you guys get to throw like how many practice throws do you get to throw because that's not fair you're starting a competition and you don't know what the terrain is exactly we have to practice you know even in the league they give us five or ten minutes of practice and that whole time i'm hunting around i'm hunting around adjusting my speed adjusting my spin adjusting my aim point to try to find that optimal that optimal place to throw the ball in practice you have to identify that to gary's point it's not that you can see the oil at all times as the tournament progresses you are reading what is happening to the balls that are thrown yeah and judging what the oil distribution is in that moment a good player has to also realize did that ball react like it did because i threw it a little bit too fast or because did i did i get a little extra finger in it and spin it a little bit too much but a good player is aware of all that and a good player also has to be accurate enough it's no it's no use for reading what the ball does unless you can throw it in the place you're aiming every time you got to make the adjustment and can you learn something from the way your opponent is throwing it yeah yeah oh definitely yes yes every every uh every throw is information concentration it's intense concentration isn't it oh you gotta just like any sport you don't want to be too intense the whole time you got to be focused and you got to pay attention and observe but you don't want to be like you're not you're not super intense staring the whole time yeah tell that to tom brady that's right so there's a thing called the curveball strategy which sounds like a baseball term but it's not it's it's applied to temp in bowling so is that a successful strategy to cope with changing oil patterns well yes we throw any good bowler throws a curveball to get that that optimal six degree entry angle that's critical you have to curve the ball to have the ball come into the pocket at the good angle and the amount of curve is affected by the oil as oil changing and as oil changes over the night you get that the amount of curve changes and you're constantly making adjustments uh but you're right a curveball is critical to bow well i'm sure there's been some 300 games from people that throw the ball straight but it's very rare now these bowling technologies like the the weight block they put in the ball that that allows it to get this gyroscopic effect that prevents the oil from building up on one stripe one knows when that top and then when that technology came out about in the 90s 1990s the num the average uh the bowling averages in leagues and the number of 300s per year increased dramatically and you know so tell me exactly what that is what what is the blocking the block the weight block yes so bowling ball again is not a homogeneous sphere if it were you would you wouldn't get gyroscopic effects and the ball would build up a a ring or circumference of oil as it's going down the lane and that would reduce the friction when it hits the dry part because it's spinning on this oil so because they're inside the ball the balls consist of what's called a cover stock it's usually an inch or so thick of material on the outer part there's a core inside of that that's a different material usually harder and then inside the core there's a weight block and it's as gary mentioned it's not always symmetrical it's it's it's like a uh generally the shape of like a little football but it has sometimes it has nodular shape it's they have they have all these patented shapes that make different manufacturers come out come out with for marketing mostly but they have different shapes that are asymmetric and they're placed in the core they're cast inside the core in asymmetric directions and when they drill your ball there's a little plug that tells them what the axis of this core is so when they drill the holes they can decide what angle to put these holes at relative to the axis of the core and now all that contributes to two things it contributes to the gyroscopic effects and it contributes to what's called the radius of gyration which we talk about we should talk about also i i can't help wondering right because i don't think ten pin bowling was initially started knowing that you'd oil the lane so a who came up with that clever idea and b what happens if you don't oil the lane well that's great points gary yeah the oil originally was to protect the wood to treat the wood and also to limit friction all right because if you if you had a totally dry wood surface well you end up with a big rut in the middle of the lake it'd be three gutters the ball would be like a trench digger exactly uh so they first you know they conditioned the lanes with the oil to treat the wood and also to reduce the friction so the wood wouldn't get damaged too easily um and in the early days people threw the ball straight you know and then the oil was there and then somebody just like in just like in billiards one day somebody put a piece of leather on the end of the tip and then they were able to put spin and then they started this a whole new world of shots opened up same thing with bowling somebody one day said oh what if i spin the ball it's going to slide through the oil and then curve does that help me they didn't know at first but through experience they learned it helps a lot has there ever been a bugs bunny shot where they throw the ball but the ball doesn't leave their hand and the ball drags them down you know funny you should say that because as uh you know i live in colorado and it's very dry normally but i played in the tournament this past weekend and uh there were a lot of people on the bowling lanes and it was getting a little warm my thumb starts to swell you get a little humid and then all of a sudden this the hole gets a little it's a little sticky a little snug the ball stuck to my thumb uh uh once and it it it didn't come out of my hand until i my hand was way up in the air and the ball went flying like 15 feet up in the air vertically and it pulled me with me and i barely caught myself see the problem if you could get if you don't catch yourself you go flying superman style and you'll land in this oil you go sliding down the lane okay so they can't handle that or you just leave your thumb inside of a ball we'd have to add another law to the cartoon laws of physics to understand what happened there well we're going to take a quick break and when we come back we want to learn more about bowling fashions or rather what's up with the shoes what why and and whose idea was it when i'll just wear shoes that other stank people wore just before being like who came up with that idea and why we're back star talk sports edition all about tenpin bowling and the physics of it we got david alcitor unknown to us previously when we had him on before talking about billiards that the man is also a bowling shark and very impressed by this dave i want to pick up a point that you started talking about but i want to i want to ask a little more deeply you're saying today the ball has three components to it in its manufacture an outer shell let's call it like my analogy is earth's crust okay an outer shell then we have a mantle a go inside but in the core is a thing that's not centered it's off center so tell me what would happen if i mounted the ball with on an axis and then spun it would it just wobble is that what it would do what's the consequence what's the spinning consequence to the ball for putting something in there that's off off-center yes great questions neil yeah so uh this asymmetry is what enables the gyroscopic effects all right and the asymmetry comes from the shape of this core it also comes from what angle do they drill the holes of your ball it also comes from what angle do you spin the ball about as you throw it so the ball is spinning about some axis the ball has this asymmetry friction is acting on the ball it causes the ball to do this gyroscopic precession or wobble or oscillating rotation whatever you want to call it and that that creates what's called track flare the oil doesn't build up under circumference the oil creates these tracks that are flared out and separated and when you get your ball back after you throw it you can actually see these oil patterns on the ball it's called track flare and you can see these different stripes of oil in the ball at these weird angles all around the ball oh my god that's why every time you watch bowling on television which by the way i never do okay but because i cuz i have a life and you know saturday afternoons for me are very busy but um but every time you see these guys approach um the lane they have like this cloth and they're it they're they're like polishing their ball which i had no idea why they did that so they're removing the oil bingo they're removing the oil you want i want that to generate as much friction as possible you also want your throat to be consistent so you don't want to have oil on it and have the oil build up over time you want to get rid of that oil i just thought they really liked those i was like man that guy is proud of that look at him he's just like yeah baby it's okay daddy's got you baby daddy's got you and they want to shine it up so they can see their pretty face in the reflection so knowing this is happening and the ball the weight block is offset i will now have to structure my technique to bring the best out of that particular setup on a ball so it's always been a one-handed thing for me watching bowling and at any time but now it's it's the the successful way is a two-handed bowl which sounds a little bit like my uh mother would do to be fair yeah the two-handed throw is actually a fairly new thing and it's not it's actually not widespread it is not new yeah chuck did it when he was a baby i was gonna tell you that was invented by three-year-olds okay yeah next time next thing you're going to tell me is they put gates up over the gutters [Laughter] but so there's a there's something called fingertip grip which now that is something that is something a fingertip grip is something that's that's prevalent everybody any decent bowler they don't stick their their middle finger and index finger all the way into the ball up to the middle knuckle they only put the fingertips in or in the span the span of the holes the fingertips are much farther from the thumb than the balls you would see in a bowling alley the balls you can use the fingers the finger holes are pretty close together but any good bowler the bolt the fingers are further apart so you just part you just put your fingertips in the ball the index finger and middle finger fingertips then your thumb that gives you a wider span and when you want to apply spin those fingers are the last things that come out that the two fingers index finger and middle does that mean the holes aren't drilled as deeply then that's right that's right and so that gives you it's like you're flicking the ball at the very end you're kind of giving it a whip it's like a whip effect on the ball okay so if the holes aren't as deep that means the balls are more symmetric well the thumb hole's still deep but and yeah but when they drill the holes in the ball it does create asymmetry and but they when they when they these weight blocks part of the issue is they they put it off center slightly so when they drill the holes it tends to balance it a little bit so that's that's kind of that's balance but most balls are actually not perfectly balanced um but that's okay but here's something in vegas proper dice have holes drilled for the numbers and refilled with another sort of putty that has the same density as the material that they drilled out so so the numbers are in white dots and the dice are red typically right and so so now there's no side that weighs more than any other because of that if you have dice where it's just holes and that's it it's a non-symmetric dice and it will not give you equal probabilities and they go to extremes to make sure those dice are balanced as well not in my neighborhood they didn't so the question dave the question we have to ask is why do bowling shoes look like they've been stolen from a 15th century medieval festival and then who convinced us that i should agree to stick my feet into somebody else's stank feet that had been there right before i arrived and what is the incidence of athlete's foot amongst bowlers well luckily there's a bowling alleys have a thing called lysol they spray lysol in these shoes to help help help limit that chuck but answering gary's question why they didn't say she sprays it in to stop it he says he's present to limit it i caught that you caught that yeah yeah that's a that's a very very important distinction that's right you know any any good bowler has their own shoes obviously but yeah the general population doesn't have their own bowling shoes you can't expect that so you have to provide them you have to provide them and it isn't an awesome gary that they look so retro cool they don't look like medieval english stuff they look like retro cool american dude yeah that's what they tell them every time i see them i'm waiting for richie cunningham to come pop into your door dave they've got there's got to be a reason why you have to have those shoes you can't just come in and bowl in your own sneakers or something what is there something special about these shoes apart from the fact they look like they're from the 15th century very special the uh the part under your toes is actually a piece of leather that allows to slide more easily on the wood surface on the lane and the heel is actually more like a rubber all right and that serves as your break it's not really sticky rubber but it's kind of a hard rubber but if you try to bowl like in tennis shoes or something you're gonna you're not gonna slide you're gonna stick and you might do the superman thing into the oil you don't wanna do that so you wanna you wanna slide in toward that foul line where you release the ball and the bowling shoes allow you to do that and the heel the rubber heel let you put on the brakes if you're sliding too much wow so it's all about the friction just the right am not too much not too little friction exactly now good balls they have a sense they have a sense for we kind of do this kind of instinctively using that heel like if we're sliding too much we can kind of sense that immediately we don't think about it and then we apply a little more pressure to the heel so it all happens you know with experience you you take advantage of that leather and that rubber to control your slide optimally because the surface gets dirty sometimes those teenagers that throw the ball with two hands chuck sometimes they they get their sticky fingers all over stuff yeah yeah and they get the lanes dirty and that's that's why that's why they shouldn't be allowed in the alley i understand that you know bowling is supposed to be a family sport but some just for certain family members you know but how about if you bowl while you're still holding your beer is that allowed uh no in fact a good bowlers don't like when you have anything any food or drink in the lane area you know you have to be in the back you have to be back where the carpet is you know and by the counter they don't want you to have yeah but there's lots of places to eat and drink behind the line yeah and what about the pins dave because they are getting brutalized every time you throw a 16 15 pound ball down the lane how are you ensuring that their integrity is there because they just i mean what are they made of now are they still made of wood well they were forever you know bowling's pretty old it's like it's literally thousands of years old the egyptians had a form of bowling all right and but for a long time it was made out of wood and they were turned on a lathe to give them that distinctive s-shape and the wood pins you know they they get chipped they get cracked you know and they have to be replaced you know fairly often but nowadays they are synthetic a really tough material and the good thing about the synthetic pens is they're more consistent you know wood has grain and wood has different properties in different directions and on different portions but the synthetic pins are more you know they're more consistent and uniform and that's probably contributed to the higher scores over the years as well you know if things are more consistent and these machines that put down the oil if they're better if the if the machines that spot the pins in the correct places are more accurate with tolerances if all that stuff is better then we can bowl better and that's what's happened over the years scores have gotten higher how rare is a 300 how rare is a 300 uh well even league bowlers like myself bowl three hundreds every once in a while you know so um uh this this past weekend i bowled uh a 279. i didn't ask about it i had one shot where i threw it what i thought was perfect yeah and i had what's called a ringing 10 pin the 10 pins the one in the corner and the pin in front of that is the six pin and if the entry angle isn't exactly perfect that you don't hit in exactly the right place that six pin just wraps around the ten sometimes it touches it and the ten pin just ringing in place it's just wow and that was the only mistake i had all strikes except this one ringing 10. so it's really ah that's why they call it a perfect game i know if you want to because you got it if it's not perfect it's not perfect right so so correct me if i'm wrong come here for more so to bowl of 300 you have to roll 12 consecutive strikes exactly okay so has anyone bowled two 300 games in a row yes people have bald three three three three hundred games in a row that gives you a perfect series of 900. ah wow okay so now based on that i'm just going to say it ain't that hard okay i'm just saying i've never heard of a pitcher who's thrown three perfect games in a row now okay i think it's easy to getting uh a hole in one in golf for example it's easier than throwing a perfect game in in baseball uh but it's still hard it's still hard so so for you uh so how many perfect games have you bowled in your life only one but i've had many i've had many two seven i asked you about the other games okay i know that's like saying that's like chuck how many standing ovations have you had well one time four people in the back stood up but then i saw that they were just going to a concession stand all right so here i'll break here i'll make you feel a little better ready so how many strikes in a row had you thrown before it and after it so that we can now get the total number of consecutive strikes that you've ever thrown yeah and oh keep track of that we know we know what that number is mine is 18. so i threw 18 strikes in a row yeah yeah very good and one time i threw one time after 16 strikes in a row and didn't get a 300 in fact both games were like in the 250s or 260s which is like mediocre i don't get it how can you if 12 in a row is a 300 how does 16 not get you over two games over two games yeah like the last eight yeah the last date of the first game the first date of the second game oh yeah right you know what that's like chuck the baseball analogy here is where you have multiple relief pitchers combining to pitch a no-hitter right that's what that is there you go you staple it together yes so yeah so no one pitcher gets a no-hitter but they all sort of participated so has it ever happened to you where it's the last throw of the game because the tenth frame you just get three throws yes but if you pick up the spare but has it ever happened where on the in the tenth frame the last throw you screw up your perfect game no i've never done that but that is very common i have a friend who did that and he got 2.99 that's it yeah you can get a 299 298 297. but if you miss if your miss is somewhere in the middle of the game you get a 279. that's the highest you can get if your misses in the middle of the game 279. okay go back to the lane then you've got the arrows because i mean the lane itself is a series of i don't want to call it points but it's boards there you go and they all have this little arrows in there and i'm obviously they they're used as guidelines are there any other kind of markers on the real estate that you can use to key off and get a better strike yeah there are other markers there's a there's a row of little circle marks in front of the arrows the arrows are about 15 feet down the lane and that's what most bowlers use to aim you know you want to be you don't want to be gazing down at your ball or gazing at the foul line you want to be gazing at your distant target about 15 feet down the lane so that's what most balls are looking at they're trying to hit a certain board you know between the arrows there's boards you can actually see the individual boards of the lane there's uh five boards per arrow and there's seven arrows across the lane so there's uh there's 35 yeah this this let's see there's there's 40 there's 39 boards total okay there's seven arrows but there's two gaps on each side of the arrows all right so yeah most bowlers are aiming at a particular board the boards are about a one inch wide and some good bowlers can can hit their target within about an inch fairly fairly reliably uh two inches the pros are within an inch you know league bowlers on me like me we can get within two inches pretty reliably the whole night we can hit our target within two inches but if your speed is off a little bit if you throw it a little too slow it curves too soon and you don't get a strike you throw a little too fast it curves too late if you don't release your fingers the exact same way you don't get the same amount of spin so you don't get the same curve so there's so many variables isn't it amazing this this is almost i am almost developing a healthy respect for balling well thank you chuck because i was i was uh i was perceiving a very strong disrespect earlier i'll tell you the truth i'm going to be here i felt it too dave i didn't like him dissing my 279s man that's oh god no this is i i have to tell you dave that i think a lot of people suffer from this bias where because everyone can go bowling people are under the impression that everyone can bowl yeah you know or bowl well or it's not as difficult as you just uh let us see which it seems like it's a game of true precision but at the same time this is the beauty of bowling and billiards you can you can be terrible and still have a great time that's what i love about billiards and pool anybody can enjoy it it's a beautiful thought has anyone tried to sort of change the game um make it more you know sexier more interesting or is it as good as it's ever going to get as we find it right now well like most sports and games we don't want to change anything right in fact these new balls that kind of revolutionize the game and kind of increase the scores a lot you know purists don't like that because it changes the game and then you can't compare today's performance to the past performance so we want the game to stay the same but having said that technology has changed a little bit and technique has changed somewhat we we've really mentioned the two-handed bowling all right so most bowlers had their fingertips in the ball and their thumb in the ball but these two handers now they only put their fingertips in the ball and they need the other hand to help support the ball so it doesn't fall off when they're about to release it they have to help support it so they go down the lane holding the ball with both hands they have their fingertips in the ball only and when they release it they can put way more spin on the ball because they're not hampered by the thumb everything's about those two fingers that spin the heck out of the ball and give it a tremendous well plus your other hand can help spin it also is that correct no the other hand is just there for support to present they don't use that because you know when you're releasing the ball the other hand uh comes off you just use the other hand to get you to that release point then the fingers do everything so how about this because i just invented a version of bowling in my head uh which is you take the hardest shots and you uh rank which shots are most difficult and then the pin configuration you can choose to get the most points so of course the 710 would be worth the most and you know uh the one pin by itself would be worse worth the least and then you can figure out these configurations and then you get to actually choose which ones you will try in order to cr to score more points interesting i like it i like it yeah so basically each setup has a different difficulty level yes thank you thank you and if you get if you get behind if you get behind the game you can take on the more challenging uh right right so you can all you can always come back and win depending on which level of difficulty you choose uh uh to to roll your ball i'm gonna give you a little credit for that even though you disrespected me earlier chuck i'm gonna say i'm gonna give you some credit that's a good idea man i think you've taken the sport in a new direction chuck dr dave it's great to have you back and i'm i'm afraid to ask you what else you are a world's expert in yeah we might find that out on another invite street dice is next three times chuck and gary always good to have you man it is thank you so that's a wrap on our star talk sports edition bowling how to be an expert know some physics yeah that's that's the takeaway from this know some physics all right and have a mom who used to work in a bowling alley combine those two it's you're a winner every time neil degrasse tyson here your personal astrophysicist keep looking up [Music]

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 75,543

Keywords: startalk, star talk, startalk radio, neil degrasse tyson, neil tyson, science, space, astrophysics, astronomy, podcast, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, niel degrasse tyson, physics, StarTalk, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, Gary O’Reilly, Dave Alciatore, Dr. Dave, Science Podcast, Sports Podcast, bowling, ten pin, lanes, Euler’s Equations of Motion, Euler, gyroscopic, friction, perfect 300, strike, spare, bowling ball, spin, velocity, momentum, gutter, asymmetry

Id: I-dtjuHs4xM

Length: 50min 52sec (3052 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 18 2022