This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, September, 2019
It’s time all schools finally incorporate the great sport of bowling into the classroom. Introductory physics classes address things like force (which equals mass times acceleration), momentum (mass times velocity) and friction (a more complicated but equally invigorating formula), but students are never given real-life examples and thus don’t retain the information as well as they otherwise could.
Currently, students are being asked things like: how long will it take this non-descript, two-dimensional square, traveling at 3 meters per second along another indecipherable surface with a coefficient of friction of .5, to come to a complete stop?
Who cares?
Nobody can relate to that. Schools need to start using real-world examples. Instead of two-dimensional squares, let’s use three-dimensional spheres. Instead of indecipherable surfaces with consistent friction, let’s use 60 feet of high-pressure laminate, otherwise known as HPL. Oh, and let’s pile some oil—of varying volumes—on top of those 60 feet, changing the coefficient of friction throughout the entire distance. And, instead of the sphere traveling at a consistent speed, let’s make sure it is at its maximum speed right at the beginning, but then decelerates (or negatively accelerates, if you prefer) as it moves over the 60-foot surface with ever-changing friction. Plus, instead of a boring linear-traveling sphere, let’s roll it out to the right at first and watch it turn back to the left as it moves along the surface.
At some point, maybe 34 feet down the HPL, let’s remove the oil altogether, except for a few stray strands that were left behind from the previous class’s example that involved urethane spheres. Getting rid of the oil will suddenly create much more friction while the sphere continues to decelerate.
Still not real enough, we’ll probably need to make this sphere rotate, so let’s assume a 65-degree axis (to keep things simple), around which the ball will rotate 350 times per minute, because for some reason we’re going to measure it by the minute when it really only takes a few seconds to make it all 60 feet.
Thinking further, why limit it to 60 feet? Let’s add another few feet with no defined rule for how long it exactly needs to be, then litter that additional portion (let’s call it a deck) with 10 oddly shaped objects, nine of which are arranged in an equilateral triangle and one of which is in the middle of that triangle, forming several smaller-but-still-equilateral triangles with its neighbors.
Now, we’re finally ready to teach physics. Instead of a tiresome question about a square on a line at a constant speed with constant friction, we come to this question:
How long will it take a 15-pound sphere to travel 60 + x feet, where x equals an undefined distance, while decelerating and being resisted by varying coefficients of friction, spinning 350 times per minute over its own 65-degree axis, then smashing into 10 objects storing potential energy and traveling through and deflecting off those objects based on their respective forces and momentums?
Finally, some relatable content.
Of course, there’s a flaw in the question itself. We shouldn’t be asking how long it will take for the sphere to travel an undefined distance. Rather, we should be asking how many of those objects are going to be knocked down. And, if less than 10, what do we need to change in order to make it 10? The speed of the sphere? The direction? The acceleration at the point of impact? The axis tilt? The revolutions per minute? Don’t even consider changing the HPL or the location of the oil—those are not variables (except when they are).
Students: don’t forget to show your work. The best possible score on your physics test is 300.