bowling ball

11.30.09

Recent Championship Takes the Tech Out of Bowling (and Yes, There is Tech in Bowling)

What happens when current day hot-shots play their games without the accoutrements? One high-stakes bowling competition set out to find out

By Brett Zarda Posted 03.03.2009 at 6:19 pm 0 Comments

Few things in sports have changed less than bowling shoes. From the color schemes to the odor spray, they’re as constant as stale bowling alley hot dogs and, um, ‘uniquely’ qualified bar staff. But, what about the balls?

While ten pounds has remained ten pounds, little else has been maintained. The impact of technology has received plenty of coverage with regard to golf, swimming and tennis, but achieving a perfect game in bowling over the past 30 years has also become less of an art and more of a science. In homage to the good old days, the Professional Bowling Association (PBA), hosted the first ever Geico Plastic Ball Championship, where competitors rolled with identical decades-old balls. We offer a brief review for those heading to the lanes next weekend and hoping to impress a date.

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READ MORE ABOUT > bowling alleys, bowling ball, centrifugal force, pro bowlers, the score

The Life-Size Mousetrap

By popsci Posted 05.20.2007 at 10:13 pm 0 Comments

Mark Perez's life-size Mousetrap rig is a 10-year labor of love. This Rube Goldbergian contraption sends a bowling ball through a bevy of component steps, all resulting in a two-ton bank safe dropping on the poor mouse's cheese. Or at least that's what supposed to happen—but if it ran perfectly every time, it wouldn't be quite as exciting, right? The semi-unsuccessful run in the video above was offset by Perez's very successful marriage proposal to his girlfriend before the action began (she plays the mouse in the show). Highly adorable.

Perez readies a trigger. He's a married man now!

READ MORE ABOUT > bowling ball, component steps, mark perez, marriage proposal, poor mouse

Time Travel Made (Relatively) Easy

If we wish to travel through time, we must be able to control it, to mold it to our own desires and specifications...

By Michael Moyer Posted 02.19.2002 at 8:05 pm 0 Comments

If we wish to travel through time, we must be able to control it, to mold it to our own desires and specifications. This is possible only through Einstein's theory of relativity. Instead of imagining space as an immutable structure, part of Einstein's genius was realizing that space and time are interlinked in a single, pliable framework called space-time. Both space and time can be distorted, sometimes dramatically. Time travel requires nothing more than exploiting those distortions to create a path through time that ends earlier-or much later-than it begins.

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