bouncing bowling ball

When an object is in a projectile motion, it generally looks like a parabola. As we learned this week, a projectile always has two elements: vertical movement and horizontal movement. Last night at our junior class bowling event, I watched as one of my classmates hurled the ball halfway across the lane and I thought to myself, "wow, that is a vector". Before the ball hits the lane, the ball has a parabolic motion. Its horizontal speed is constant while the vertical speed is lowest at the peak and speeds up closer to earth. After the ball hits the lane, however, it is no longer a projectile because it is not in the air. There is no longer any vertical movement because the ball is rolling on the ground. The horizontal speed is minimally affected because the grease on the lane reduces friction. This means that the ball will still have a lot of speed and erego a lot of momentum when it smashes into the pins.