math name for force and see comments below?

Question

if a bowling ball weighing 16 pounds traveling at 23 MPH and hits bowling pins weighing 3.5 pounds (only one pin was hit) what is the unit of force upon impact. if i could get the formula to figure the problem, that would be a great plus! i dont think this matters, but the lane is 60 feet long and 5 feet wide. the speed does not change from start to finish.

Answer 1

Only impulse (force x duration, or the quantity of momentum transferred to the pin) is calculable from the data, not force by itself, which is variable in time and not directly meaningful.

If the moving object has mass M and velocity V, and the object being struck has mass m, then assuming the collision is elastic and all motion is in the forward direction (all these assumptions are at least approximately true for the bowling ball and pin) then the impulse is:

Impulse = 2*M*m*V/(M+m)

Each pound value must be divided by g to get proper units of mass, so this is:

=(g/g^2)*[2*16*3.5/19.5]*V = 5.74*(V/g)

Since:

V/g = 23mph/(32ft/sec^2) = 1.05 seconds

the result is:

6 pound-seconds

It's the equivalent of 6 pounds acting for 1 second, or 1 pound acting for 6 seconds, or etc..

Answer 2

16 divided by 23 times 60 equals 4.173913 newtons of force which is not allot of force but what you should be trying to calculate here is aiming

Answer 3

Force is mass times velocity. I will leave the details to you

Answer 4

Try this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force