Ball Speed Question

[hammeredinkansas]

I've been bowling for several years now, but only recently gotten serious about it. I'm actually researching bowling balls, instead of using whatever I had, or buying whatever is on sale, or attempting to use one ball for varying lane conditions. I've learned a lot from reading threads on this message board, various websites and my local pro. One thing I see a lot of in here is ball speed. I know it's imprortant, but how do you measure it? Other than trying to borrow a radar gun from a local cop, there's got to be a simple formula for calculating speed (there's a good reason the kids stopped coming to me with their math homework). :confused:

[can-ham]

Look for AMF lanes in your area; some of them will have built in speed monitoring.

OR

Aside form getting a cop to clock your ball at the ally. You could get a friend with a stopwatch to time from your release to the ball hitting the pins.

Here comes the high school math: Speed = Distance / Time

The distance is 60 feet and 1 foot = 0.000189393939 miles so to get your ball speed in mph:
Speed = (0.000189393939 x 60 (feet)) (miles) / (your_time (sec) / (60 x 60))hours

Speed (miles/hour) = 40.909090824 / your_time (in seconds)

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but you should be able to divide 40.909090824 by your time to get your mph speed.

[hammeredinkansas]

Thanks can-ham for the math lesson. I messed around with it for a bit (really slow at work today). This is embarassing, but I had to look up how many feet are in a mile...I've been out of school for way too long! I used 3 seconds as an example of the time the ball leaves my hand to when it hits the pins. 60/3 = 20 ft/sec. I took that times 60, then 60 again to get 72,000 ft/hr. I then divided the result by 5280 (ft in a mi) and ended up with 13.6 mph. To check my math, I took your number, divided by 3 sec, and came up with the same result. Keeping 40.909091 handy (I had to shorten it since my calculator's display is only so big), is much easier. Now I only need to time myself. Thanks again!