Ask Yahoo!
Ask Home - Yahoo! - Help

 Ask Yahoo!
Wednesday February 21, 2001 Previous | Next
Dear Yahoo!:
What are bowling balls made of?
Bruce
Edgewater, Maryland
Dear Bruce:
Despite our fondness for chucking one down the gutter, we had no idea what mysterious material goes into a bowling ball. A search on "bowling ball made of" led us to an enlightening article from the Complete Bowling Index web site.

The article summarized the recent history of bowling-ball material.

  • In the 1960s, hard rubber balls were king.

  • Polyester balls stole the scene in the '70s. (Most of the "house balls" in your local bowling alley are of the polyester variety.)

  • The '80s saw the dawn of the urethane ball.

  • Urethane balls matured in the early '90s with the introduction of reactive urethane.

We searched on "reactive urethane," hoping for more information about this new breed of ball, and uncovered the FAQ page of the J & J Bowling Supply web site.

As the site informed us, the innovations didn't end with reactive urethane. The newest material is proactive urethane, which gives the ball a "fuzzy" feel and imnproves traction, "sort of like an all-weather tire does on the highway."

 
Related Links
·What are pool balls made of?
·What is the "lava" made of in a lava lamp?
·The Physics of Bowling
More Questions About
·Sports
·What is X made of?
·Yahoo! Answers - Sports
Get Ask Your Way
·Most Popular
·Yahoo! Toolbar
· View RSS Feed  add to My Yahoo!
Email this page -    Save to del.icio.us    Save to My Web    Digg This

Copyright © 2001 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy - Terms of Service - Copyright/IP Policy

All information available through or in connection with Ask Yahoo! is informational only and provided "as is" without warranties, representations, or guarantees of any kind. Yahoo! disclaims any and all implied warranties respecting Ask Yahoo!. Use of Ask Yahoo! is entirely at your own risk and is not a substitute for conducting your own research.