How Hidden Technology Transformed Bowling

I thought I was bad at bowling personally, but now I know I'm bad at bowling scientifically. Thanks!

As someone who has bowled all their life, this is by far the best explained, most accurate, representation of the factors that affect the game. Well done to the Veritasium team.

I like how stressed Weber gets when asked to bowl on the dry lane.

As I was cleaning out my mothers house after she died, I was really surprised by her bowling trophies. I never once saw her bowl, or do anything “sporting.” But apparently she had a 175 league average and a 200-something game. But his was in the late 60’s. After watching this video, I’m even more impressed.

I love how the pro bowler was practically insulted by Derek's request that he try bowling on the unoiled lane.

This is absolutely wild. The idea that the technology behind bowling is as advanced as it is is fascinating and makes me rethink the sport. Different oil patterns, different balls, different internals, different surface materials. Awesome!

Lesson learned: next time I go bowling, I'll ask the facility what their oil patterns are to optimize my strategy, and then after making a big show of that, subsequently lose.

I worked evenings in a bowling alley in 1978 & 79 and learned lots of things that were surprising. One was the cost for fire insurance for a building filled with lanes made of oak, surfaced with 7 coats of lacquer, and kept oiled daily with a light coating of oil. All of these were quite flammable which made the insurance bill the largest expense that owners had. I was involved with laying the 7 coats of lacquer during that time and was very happy once we had finished because we pulled 1 coat every 4 hours with the fans turned off which meant the air became heavy with the vapors. As the years passed and balls were made from new materials, the lanes were made out of nonflammable materials coated with safer coatings.

Can't believe you did all this stuff with Storm and didn't once mention how they make their bowling balls scented. Each model has its own scent (vanilla, cinnamon, apple, etc.)

When I was a kid, my neighbor use to take us bowling. Maureen was a big lady, and when she would roll the ball down the lane, the pins would jump out of the way of her ball. I can’t count how many 300 games she had but it was in the thousands. She could’ve been a pro, but she loved being a stay at home mom. Bowling was just a hobby for her.

I used to bowl a lot and in 28 minutes you have explained the game and technology very well. Kudos.

Getting to bowl with Big Pete is a peak experience

He really did not want to throw a bad strike on that dry lane.

This is awesome and super interesting. I'd love to see the same analysis done on disc golf... recently took that up as a hobby and the way disc edge shapes affect aerodynamics and flight paths are really incredible.

I used to be on a bowling league and went to tournaments, and you nailed this video! A lot of the stuff you mentioned were the same stuff my coaches would always talk about. Your form and consistency is the biggest, no ball is gonna fix bad aim lol

I watched this a year ago as a non-bowler and was fascinated. Now a year later I joined my first league and have become obsessed with learning more to get better, knowing much more on the subject I watched it again and am so impressed with how accurate the information is and how well organized it is for non-bowlers to understand. Love your videos, keep up the great work!

I'm impressed. As an experienced engineer, I thought I was going to get bored with this topic in the first minute.
Your presentation is OUTSTANDING!!
I would never have thought that technology like this would have been used, and all for a series of cascading reasons.
Well done!!

Honestly this might be my favourite Veritassium video I’ve seen. I love the exploration of all aspects of bowling technique and technology. I never knew most of it before and tbh its increased by interest in bowling as a sport. Interesting topic and Very well executed, the perfect combination for an excellent and enjoyable video

I feel like this should become a series. I would definitely watch more deep dives into sports like this.

Fascinating! My bowling ball is a gyro-balanced 'Don Carter Gyro 2'. It's now 49 years old! I bought it and had it fitted in 1974 when I was 18 years old, and it cost me £21 back then. I've rarely used it since the end of the 70s. I'm old school and prefer manual projection scoring on league games.

The angle-of-attack breakdown at 8:30 in this video explains why I've never been good at bowling strikes. I always rolled a very straight ball. I could hit the 1-3 pocket pretty consistently, but the strike was still kind of rare. So a common game for me was 10 spares plus whatever that final ball was. And as such, I've never broken 200, yet there was a span when I'd routinely score in the 170-190 range.

I'm a pinchaser and mechanic for an 18 lane Brunswick converted-A2 pinsetter alley. I was really hoping for some dive into the world behind the masking unit. Take the trip through the mechanics door, walk down the isle of improvision, and take in the mechanical wonders and principals that have also majorly impacted the sport of bowling.

As a Bowling Center mechanic since the early 80's I can tell you ABC ( American Bowling Congress) allowed us to change the way we oiled the lanes, it use to be no more than 3 units difference between each board of the lane or the award score did not pass and you had to oil the lane so far down. They changed it to allow us to do shorter oil patterns and then quit checking altogether after award scores were shot. Once they quit checking everyone changed the oil patterns to a "blocked shot" which is usually hardly any oil on first 10 boards of the lane then a large wall in the middle of lane so the ball rolls along the wall to the end of the oil then hooks into the pocket. It is like rolling your ball on a railroad track to the pocket. They still use blocked shots almost everywhere today. A blocked shot makes it super easy to score high, yes the bowling ball technology has increased since the 80's. I will tell you this , put out a difficult pattern where it is more a crown shot with no more than 3 units of oil difference between each board and most bowlers averages will drop by as much as 30 pins a game. In the end making the game easier was the death of the sport as most bowling alleys have closed in this area, there use to be 4 more than there is today and league bowling is at a all time low even before covid.

Humans true super power.....taking something simple and making it as complicated as possible.

I know it would be a nightmare for the lane owner, but it would be really neat to use dyed oil to see how the pattern smears over time.

That's also why pros will have strike and spare balls. Strike balls are meant to try to curve and hit the six degree angle, while there are quite a few balls that have a perfectly spherical core, so they curve very little. This allows much more accuracy, especially when you want to hit just one leftover pin (or if the pin is on the edges, and you can't curve it, or it would go in the gutter)

Please do this for disc golf!!!! There is so much physics behind the sport and it would be wonderful to see a deep dive from you! Loved this video

I was familiar with some of these concepts, and i do throw curving balls, but this is much more detail than i knew. I usually try to aim for roughly the kind of curve shown here, but adapt to the conditions of the lane as i discover it through the first series. I've had 3 games in the 220s with standard house balls, and i suspect the lane conditions were very good coupled with a decent amount of luck on top of good shape those days.
I don't bowl competitively or in any league, so i suspect my scores are dominated by the dice of public bowling lane oiling and the state of the house balls that day. In general I've found low friction (too much oil or smooth balls) to be my main problem. Though i did once bowl on an almost dry lane, which was horrible and no matter how calmly i tried to spin the ball it always went in the left gutter. When there's way too much oil in the "dry zone", i move the initial position of my curve further right, and possibly even slow down the speed of my ball. In the other case of a dry oiled section i move longer left and throw harder or put less spin on the ball.

When I was a kid my dad rolled 17 strikes in league play, and did not get a 300 game. He got a trophy for a .733 winning percentage, I think. The whole alley stopped after the streak got long, imagine being that close to two three hundred games in a row and just missing both cause of the timing of the steak. Had he gotten that 300 they'd have put his name above the alley, much like Get Smart, he was that close.

Have bowled since age 5 and now that I'm old and disabled, I find I really miss going out for a few games now and then. Almost as much as I miss running. C'est la vie!

I'm honestly surprised there's room in the bowling industry for 11 manufacturers. Insane.

A friend of mine did Beer bowling every tuesday when studying on university: Each missed pin...was a beer. He told me after say 2 turns missing several pins everyhthing went exponentially worse from there and after 1.5 hours or so You definetaly needed 2 lanes AT LEAST!! Making the 6 degree approach angle very easy ..( on your neigbhours lane 🤣🤣🤣)
The bowling alley owner was always prepared on tuesdays...

Great explanation of how much bowling balls have changed. No question that people are bowling better now. That Weber guy is amazing. When he was getting 300's, people would only get them very rarely.

Great video! Glad I found it. On my first 300 game, I went to the lanes late in the morning, asked for the freshly oiled "virgin" lanes, asked for a few practice shots, started my game and kept throwing strikes. I took a break halfway through the game, talked to the attendant, he said start adjusting the hook & slightly slow the throw while reducing the spin, it worked! I got to frame 10 & the final throw was pretty slow but the 10 pin shook a little & fell. I went to collect my game score printout! 😁

Good one! I knew there was more to the discipline than a ball thrown down the lane but never cared enough to research it. You brought it packaged and placed a bow on it, thanks brother.
Keep on keeping!

Bowling's cool because it's one of the few sports out there where the governing body doesn't try and suppress innovation.

Years ago, at my office, we had a league bowler who seemed an absolute marvel to the uninitiated. There was a bowling alley across the street, and once in a while after work we'd all go over, ostensibly to bowl, but mostly to watch him.
To his coworkers, he appeared as good or better than the pros on TV, and newcomers would always ask why he himself wasn't up on the screen. He'd laugh and explain how we were all bowling on a "house shot" - i.e., a recreational oil pattern - and that house shots were easier to score on. He said this was no secret, that most regular bowlers were aware of the difference between patterns used for customer play - even league play - and those used for pro play. He assured us that if he had to bowl on pro patterns, we'd soon see the difference between him and the pros.
I think it was pretty classy of him to be honest. I'm afraid that if I had been he, I'd have been tempted to describe myself as an undiscovered Don Carter.

I always wondered what the point of those 4 ball bags was. I just assumed it was so families could go bowling without having 4 different bags. I didn't realize the pros used different balls for different oil patterns. Makes a lot more sense that way.

I remember growing up and seeing pictures of some of the people in the 900 club and was just in awe how someone could pull that off and how stress filled it must have been to come down to the remaining frames in the last game.

From 1973 to 1977 I was a Brunswick Automatic Pinsetter mechanic at a bowling alley near Pittsburgh. Sometimes in the afternoon I'd work behind the counter when the little old ladies leagues were bowling. The only three hundreds that I saw were an occasional 300 total for a three-game series.

My grandfather bowled several 300 games in his long life, but he was always part of a local bowling team/league. Whenever I visited we'd all go to the bowling alley and bowl. But I have a weird thumb so your general balls are hard for me to throw, short thumb, very wide it would always get stuck inside the thumb hole xD I had a wicked spin when I did release it, it'd go all the way around xD Having fucked up thumbs sometimes helped haha.

The most important factor is bowler applied force. How a bowler rolls the ball is more important than what the cover is made of, the core of the ball, the finish of the cover, or even the oil on the lanes.

I love how offended he was when you asked him to make the bad shot on purpose. The man loves his job for sure.

I love how enthusiastic professionals are at this. they get as hyped from a strike as anyone else and I think that's amazing

Played on my high school team. I vaguely knew about most of this stuff before I started but once I learned a lot of the specifics I got significantly better. I’ve technically scored a 300 game with a consecutive 12 strikes just over the course of 2 games. The score of the better game and still my current record is 278. Got it at when I was 20.

This video was absolutely excellent .
Informative , visually engaging and just thoroughly enjoyable to watch.
A sincere "thank you" for having such exemplary knowledge and skill at your craft.

I've always been fairly good at bowling, but never knew what I have learned here today.
Always wondered what could increase my average closer to 300. Curved shots were something I always thought was just like a party trick, no one ever told me it was the difference maker.

weirdly enough the most detailed and well put together Veritasium video I have seen. No clickbaity. Facts felt like a 10 min video. Props. Often you seem arrogant or ill informed even tho your a Physicist but this was very concise and to the point. Big up

As someone who has bowled for 15 years and averages over 220 in league, I want to say this video is incredible! It goes into so much depth but still explains every concept correctly and simply. If you watched this video you know so much more about the science behind the sport than a majority of regular league bowlers. Most bowlers can not tell what the rg on a ball actually means

This video explains what I think most of us have wondered about those crazy bowling balls (eg., why some shots look awesome and get strikes, others are just blah). It's not silly for a weekender to pick out "favourite" balls when bowling. thanks for posting! :D

Been bowling for almost 50 years now. Just learned more about the ball, the lane, and how best to use them in the last 28 min than I did in all 50 of those years. Haha. Wicked cool!

i knew most of this but could never explain it as articulate as you did. I sent this video to my son who is great bowler and said the is the most amazing bowling video explaining the physics, theory and technique I've ever seen. Amazing job Sir. I'm born and raised St. Louis and followed Pete and his Dad Dick.

I love this game! My favorite passtime sport. Grew up playing in leagues pretty much all my life. It's funny how easily an oil pattern can defeat even the best bowlers. You can easily shoot 20-30 pins under average due to not understanding an oil pattern. Nevermind not using the right bowling ball to begin with. You combine the two, and that's when league bowlers start cussing and drinking more than usual.

I absolutely loved this video, i've been bowling for about 16 years now, and im 19 in a few days, im in a few leagues, including the youth league at my home centre.
It's a YBC bowling league (Youth Bowl Canada) and i went to provincials a few weeks ago, ended up winning with an average of 222 over 6 games, and now im going to nationals to compete Canada wide, and internationals to compete across all of Canada and the United States
it's gonna be a blast

I’m a bowler and the knowledge I’ve accumulated over 2 years is condensed into a 28 min video. This would have been helpful when I started 😂. Awesome video

Bowling was my favorite sport to take part in as a kid and me finding all of this cool information when I’m older really makes me wanna get back into it.

Being a regular bowler and having my own vlballs, this video helped me understand how bowling is even more

The most important factor for me is usually to find the line between putting too much spin on the ball and too little. My biggest weakness is that Im very inconsistent.

I'm only a minute in but this is going to be one of those treasure YT videos. My company"s holiday party is at a bowling alley on Saturday and I was already pumped but now that the Universe... or the algorithm sent this my way I'm extra fired up to hopefully bowl over 100!!!! I love bowling but have been maybe a dozen times in 41 years

I've never seen a video about bowling this in-depth. Thank you!

".. We need the oil. If there was no oil, nobody would have fun."
That's the most American thing ever said coincidentally

Great video! I'm just getting back into bowling and about to order a new ball. Good to know that I have a better chance at strikes hooking the ball. Keep up the awesome vids!

When I was a kid my aunt had an indoor toy bowling kit with two plastic balls and pins. I finally understand why it sucked so bad: no oil makes bowling a boring chore. His face when he was asked to bowl on an un-oiled lane was the same face we made when my aunt set up the pins up on the carpet. ;)

In British pubs people used to play skittles, like a mini version of bowling. You sadly don't see skittle lanes in pubs any more but it was a staple feature once. I haven't seen one for years. We have bowling alleys but they're really base quality.

I,ve been bowling for most of my youth and my entire adult life. I quit about 8 years ago because our local bowling alley shut down. I tried to bowl out of town but it was to much of a hassle. Back then when I purchased a ball, I knew what I wanted the ball to do and how I wanted it drilled. I was pretty good at bowling, with multable 300 games and 800 series games. The technology that came around over the years, made everyone a better bowler. These days it is very common to see a 175 average bowler shoot 300. The 300 game is pretty common all over the U.S. For every 300 bowled in a sanctioned league makes you eligible to buy a gold 300 ring a the market rate of gold. They are fairly expensive. I bowled my first 300 when I was 20 years old and back then, the 300 game was rare so the gold rings were at no charge to the bowler. That is the one that is very special to me because It cost me nothing. every one after that, I had to pay for it if I wanted to. Bowling in a league was like going to church. You would see each other once a week. I have made many friends as a result of bowling but since the closure I hardly see the people I used to bowl with anymore. It was a wonderful time in my life. Oh and by the way your video was outstanding. The best video to date regarding how technology has evolved in the sport.

Last time I went bowling I bowled a pretty good game. I think I threw about 5 or 6 strikes, and knocked down at least 9 pins in every frame if I didn't pickup the spare. I was playing with the lanes balls and I was making no attempts to hook it. Just chuck it a to the right of the center pin as straight as possible. It was a great game and made me think "maybe I should take up bowling in my spare time."
What I got from this was that I got that amazing score using the wrong type of ball and the wrong technique.
Well if I can do that being wrong, I'm not sure I want to be right.

Working around the bowling industry for the last 15 years or so, this actually is the most informative video I've seen on the subject. Plenty of pro shop guys could use to explain things this clearly.

The best video of bowling that I've ever seen. Now I know the science of bowling, I never gave a thought to the difference between bowling balls. This was incredibly informative.

If I had been taught this when I was in grade school I would be a pro-bowler by now.

I seem to remember an episode of Hill Street Blues where Stan Jablonski bowled a perfect game, but it ended up being disqualified because the league examined the lane and found the oil used on the wood caused the ball to be allowed to slide, giving him an unfair advantage. Jabo was furious.
Seems he was just ahead of his time.

Love this video! You should do a scientific video like this analyzing skiing or snowboarding!

This is definitely one of the coolest videos on Clip-Share always wondered these things about bowling and sure learned a ton

My takeaway from the section at the end about advancements in bowling technology is this: I'm getting better at bowling every year without actually bowling. Thanks, science!

I filled my plastic toy bowling ball 1/3 water and solder closed the hole. Set the plastic pins on the linoleum bathroom floor. The water gave the ball an off center weight and a spin sent the ball skidding across the rug hitting and gripping the bathroom floor right into the classic pocket shot. I figured out bowling ball science around the time they started adding weights inside them. Had the rug as my oil. On snowing winter days we bowled in my home instead of trekking through the snow to the real alley 2 miles away.

as a bowler, seeing non-bowler's be surprised how intricate bowling actually is

Its so crazy that bowling became such a skilled and interesting game just because they wanted to protect the floor. Humanity is beautiful.

Never thought much about the physics of this sport. I assumed it was like a dead straight three point shot, based on mechanics of the release and angles. If one practiced the correct launch, so to speak, they’d be a great bowler. Just like a professional basketball player that can shoot in practice or competition without a defender. They can stroke several in a row. Like Klay Thompson making 24 in a row the other day. Now I see I was way off. Bowling is a true science. That many variables to a strike is crazy! And it seems like pro bowlers just figured out a cheat code. Great vid!

Great video. Just wish there was a segment about the creation and explanation of the pins. And then how different angles and contact would be used to hit pins that are split

The production quality exceeds many TV shows at this point! Well done Derek and everyone involved in the production.

Fascinating. The only thing you left out is the amount of finger digits that go in the ball (zero, 1, or 2). 2 is what house balls use at alleys. 1 (fingertip) is what most pros use. And zero is those weird folks that don't put their fingers in the ball at all.

Thank you very much for making this video! I have bought alot of bowling balls over the years I bowl a few times a week so im a junkie and the pro shop guy is able to explain some of this stuff but you explained RG perfectly along with alot of other things. I really appreciate the chart of what changes ball motion the most. So much good information here!

I like how the pro bowlers know so little about how bowling works. They're just good at doing it.

I went to a friend’s house tonight and played Wii sports and I absolutely demolished them in bowling because I remembered the technique in this video. Physics really is useful, thanks Veritasium.

Unbelievably fantastic video on everything about... bowling. Life changing!!! Thorough, beautifully presented, produced. Thanks so much!!

As a bowler for 32 years, this video made me extremely happy. I had never had a perfect game in my 32 years until last year. I ended up with three 300 games within a two-month period last year. This sport can make you feel on top of the world, but I've been at some tournaments where nothing went right and it felt like I was wasting money and the worst bowler ever.
Thanks for the great video, Veritasium. And thank you for showing that there's more to our sport than just getting drunk and throwing a ball down the lane :)

I feel one of my greatest bowling accomplishments is that I managed to get a gutter ball on my first turn of that round with bumpers on

I always just played the sport, I never knew how much science went into it! I'm pleasantly surprised!

I never thought I would want to know the science of bowling but this video peeked my interest. It seems that now I like bowling more!😂😅 good job doing the video, keep at it! You deserve a like

Thank you soooo much for making a video like this to express how technical the sport of bowling can be

Never crossed my mind that bowling could be this technical. Very interesting

Amazing video, it was awesome learning the complexity of a sport that looks "simple"

I actually started bowling as a hobby because of this video.

Our class once went bowling with our physics teacher.
I had just written my paper (that is an important part for your german "high school" diploma), and my teacher had some questions.
And while we were discussing my enigmatic writing, in between my friends just called "Stefan, your turn", and I went over, hit what was left (we were bowling as team), and went back discussing.
In the moment we were done, and I had time to concentrate on the game, it was all over. It got mediocre.
So obviously it is largely a thing of instinct, of NOT thinking about what to do.
Just to say it, the times I was bowling are probably not more than two hands. Before that event, I think (that is more than 35 years ago) maybe 1 or 2 times.

7:35: It's amazing how accurate some things are that humans do. Modern "shooter" video games are a good example of this. When I was first getting serious about my aim, I started doing things like measuring my sensitivity, how big targets were in respect to mouse movements, etc, and it's astonishing how fine and accurate those movements need to be. Even with a very low sensitivity, it's not uncommon for a person size target at a medium distance to require mouse movements more accurate than a half a millimeter to hit the shot. And considering that this often all unfolds in under a second between noticing the person, snapping the crosshairs on them and then shooting, it's an astonishing thing.

Thanks for this vídeo. Common sense adjustments agree with scentific studies. Less oil makes you adjust your throwing more to the center of the lane to hit the pocket. For a dry lanes the aim zone will be narrow and to the center ( mark 10 to 17 right hand and mark 30 to 23 left hand). Two handed throwers need more power and will follow similar aim zone release adjustments. No nightmare , a dry lane is a challenge to make adjustments for pros and amateurs alike. Thanks and have a great bowling day.

the amount of bowling balls that are in dumps is astonishing not to mention how dangerous they are. Had a situation at one of the dumps where one of the loaders ran over one and it shot out like a cannon ball. Now if you are caught dumping one your banned. They stack all of the balls up out front and there are thousands of them.

I remember fondly when my dad told me of a story once when he partook in a perfect game competition back in the '80s which awards the winner a car. He said that the more strikes he got the more judges sat near him to observe his throws. He said that he lost his streak at the tenth throw from the pressure of being observed closely by so many people. Having watched this video, I'm guessing that the factors related oil had more to do with him losing the streak than the pressure. This video gave me a new appreciation for that story

That is undoubtedly the best video for demystifying bowling, that I've seen in over a decade of playing bowling. Fantastic production

I grew up with bowling from the point of view of helping with my father's invention. Automatic Scoring. Playing was never my focus. This was a great introduction to the rest of 'mechanics'.

“I didn’t know they put oil on the lanes”
They absolutely do! As someone who accidentally slightly stepped over the line as a child I figured that fact out the hard way XD