This version of bowling is great if you have a bad back, or can't lift heavy things, or just want a change of pace!

The ball is made of styrofoam and weighs about 6 ounces. You bowl it the same way, but when it gets down towards the pins, a powerful vaccuum sucks it up, and a wide, heavy mallet swings down in the same location/direction where your ball was, approximately simulating what would have happened if you had sent a real bowling ball down the lane.
-- phundug, Jul 24 2003

When you're built like I am <flexes> every bowling ball feels like styrofoam...
-- DeathNinja, Jul 24 2003


You'd have to play in a very thin atmosphere. Otherwise the very light ball would stop after a very short distance. Trying to compensate with shorter lanes would just make the game boring (since the pins would take up a much larger angle, they'd be harder to miss). Maybe it'd work if the lanes were slanted down towards the pins...but then what if you trip while taking your turn?- you'd slide down a slippery, waxed wood lane, hit a bunch of pins, and then be clobbered by a wide, heavy mallet. Methinks that if you have the technical ability to sense speed and direction of a moving ball well enough to use a giant mallet to simulate the effect of a normal ball, maybe you should just use the data your sensors give you to launch a real ball on the same path.
-- hopeful, Jul 25 2003


hopeful, all was well in the universe of bad things that could happen until you said "Methinks". +
-- thumbwax, Jul 25 2003


[hopeful] - I'll install fans over the alley so that the ball keeps its momentum and doesn't come to a stop.
-- phundug, Jul 25 2003



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