Website of the Week: Science of the Olympic Winter Games

The Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics is this Friday, so it's a great time to review the Science of the Olympic Winter Games. NBC paired up with the National Science Foundation to create sixteen short videos on the science behind everything from curling to hockey. (Note: I had difficulty accessing these videos from the official NBC Olympics website. You can also view them at NBC Learn.)


Want to learn about Newton's Three Laws of Motion? Check out speed skating. Forms of energy? Try hockey. Angular momentum? View aerial skiing and figure skating. How is math used at the Games? Watch Mathletes.

I found these videos to be entertaining, educational, and a nice introduction to individual members of the U.S. Olympic Team. (For those outside of the U.S., humor us when viewing the patriotic parts!) Mathletes and Short Track Speed Skating were particularly well done.

I can't wait for the Games! How about you?

[Update: Right after I posted this, I headed to Twitter and found out that there are also lesson plans for grades 6-9 to go with this series on Lessonopoly. How awesome is that?]


Photo credit: Justin D. Henry, via flickr // CC BY 2.0

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Website of the Week: 2008 Olympic Games

Website of the Week: 2008 Olympic Games

This week's website is The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. I realize that it's not even loosely a science website, but with the Summer Games starting today, it just seems right.

I've been reading online that there have been some calls to boycott the games due to China's history of human rights violations. Personally, I don't think boycotting the games makes much sense. It's one thing to draw attention to the problem, quite another to place the burden of the boycott on innocent bystanders, including those Olympic athletes who have trained their whole lives for this one shot at greatness.

I love the Olympics. I think the spirit and sense of camaraderie is wonderful. It gives me hope that we, as a world, can actually work together to solve our problems, environmental and otherwise.

Update (8/21/08): Check out Grist's list of Green Olympians!

Website of the Week: Victoria Junior College

While I was researching the interior of bowling balls for last Monday's post, I came across this wonderful website about balls by the Victoria Junior College of Singapore. Want to know how many dimples there are on a golf ball? Interested in the physics behind spinning balls? Want to learn which sport had balls that used to explode? Explore the engineering, design and history of balls from ten different sports here. And let me know which one is your favorite!

What's in a bowling ball?

Photo credit: Leon Brooks
Last night, I saw this commercial where a guy crushes a bowling ball with his bare hands. It was a dramatic scene with the ball shattering into little pieces. The ball was obviously hollow. I thought to myself, "How silly is that? Of course bowling balls are solid."

Then I had another thought. "If bowling balls are solid – and roughly the same circumference – why do they weigh different amounts? Maybe they aren't solid after all."

It turns out that bowling balls have an outer shell and an inner core. There are four popular types of bowling ball shells in use today – plastic, urethane, resin, and particle (a mix of resin and ceramic or glass particles) – according to Bowlers Paradise.

I expected the inner cores to be simple, round, metal spheres, but as it turns out, that’s not the case. This diagram from the United States Bowling Congress shows how cores come in all different shapes and sizes, which affect the ball’s spin and how it hooks as it rolls down the lane. Lighter balls have a core made of foam; heavier balls use polymers and resins (A tip of the hat to Victoria Junior College in Singapore for that information).

If you are interested in the physics behind bowling ball mechanics (or you need an unusual topic for your next science report), be sure to check out "Harry" the robot, described by the USBC as "an approximately seven-foot tall robotic bowling ball thrower." USBC researchers use Harry "to help test balls, lanes, pins and oil patterns." (I had no idea!)

While looking for the answer to what lies inside a bowling ball, I discovered the next generation of bowling, courtesy of Brunswick. In Brunswick's Virtual Bowling, a player throws a small ball down a real lane, but there are no pins. Instead, you get to knock down virtual pins (like video ketchup bottles) on a video background (like a ketchup factory). If you can’t wait for virtual bowling to hit your nearest arcade, try out the USBC Games page!

If you liked this post, you might also like:

--Website of the Week: Victoria Junior College (more on balls & science)
--Simulations from Physics Education Technology (learn to shoot a bowling ball out of a canon online!)

[Update: 3/17/09 -- Checked links & added suggested posts]