APPLIED MATHEMATICS

Northern Advocate, 13 March 1948, Page 4

APPLIED MATHEMATICS

(3) To put a body in motion it requires force to overcome its inertia, and this force, acting through the displacement of the body, also does work. So we come to the delivery of the bowl from the mat to the head. The player swings the 3j-pound bowl through an arc of from 3 to 4 feet, varying according to the nature of the shot.

II can he assumed the work done in this operation would at least double that of lifting up the bowl. In addition the poor old lead has to lift and propel the iack

(4) A 17th Century bishop wrote o t bowlers thus: “No anticks screws men’s bodies into such strange flexures, and you would think them here senseless to speak sense to their bowls, and put their trust in entreaties for a good cast.” The good bishop’s observation made in the dim, distant past still holds true today. Bowls vary in diameter from four and seven-eighths to five and threesixteenth inches, according to the size of the hand. Playing to a full-length head of 100 feet, a bowl in traversing the green revolves 75 times, each revolution carrying it about 16 inches. The bias on a bowl would cause it to draw about 5 feet on an average green.

Concentration now enters the picture. When the bowler takes up his position on the mat he has to judge the amount of green to a hair’sbreadth. He then endeavours to deliver his bowl directly along that line with just the right amount of force to cause it to roll along its curved course like a “swan on the water.”

To obtain a “toucher,” or place a bowl, that force also has to be judged

to within one-sixteenth of a turn. Hence the physical contortions or “anticks”

(5) On the completion of each end, 36 tons of Henselite, Ay rite, Vulcanite, Lignum Vitae, Rolphite, Bussey Poloid, Dunlop Hard Rubber, etc., had to be propelled with the pedal extremities over an average distance of 20 feet from the head back to the mat. This task, performed by the leads only, expends plenty of “foot-pounds.” (6) Players are on their feet throughout the whole day. The leads deliver their bowls to the directions of the skips, march up to the head to direct the skips (they are still concentrating all the time as they “ride” their own shots to the head and their opponents off'it) then kick the bowls back and start the next end. Each trundler walks over two miles between ends, and, with incidental meanders, plus the four-way journey between his home and the green, he will cover roughly seven miles in the day.

The action in delivering the bowl would be equal to a "full knees bend” with 3£ pound of lead in your pockets.

(7) Now for the “wearin’ o’ the green” and the tramp of marching feet. Taking 11 stone as a conservative estimate of each player’s weight, the playing surface is subjected to a live weight of 594 tons and a dead weight of 36 tons of Henfeelite, etc., is rolled and kicked over it This causes the worms to dig deeper underground and accounts for the drawn look on a greenkeeper’s visage (8) On the second day the performance is repeated by qualifiers and the finalists. Mathematicians could supply an endless list of facts, but these few should suffice.