How does the weight of a bowling ball effect how many pins it knocks down?

Answer 1

Because a heavier ball has both more mass (weight) and inertia (resistance to being deflected), it's more likely to drive through the pins and cause them all to fall.

As strange as it sounds, on a textbook strike, the Bowling ball itself only touches four of the ten pins. But it imparts energy to those pins, causing them to ricochet in a predictable pattern that causes them to take out the other six pins.

The heavier the ball is, the more energy it transfers to those four pins, and the more likely they are to carry out their job. Of course, this assumes the ball isn't too heavy for the bowler to throw; since Force = mass x acceleration, a lighter ball thrown harder can hit the pins with as much (if not more) power than a heavy ball thrown slowly.

Answer 2

That depends on how heavy your bowling ball is. If it is a 6 pound ball, it will not knock down as many pins as you would want it to. If you had a 14 pound ball, chances are you will knock down more pins with a heavier bowling ball.