Bowling
Some friends and I have gotten into bowling a little fanatically lately. We’ve been having a lot of fun, mostly me losing and trying to convince my friends to start curving the ball with me, even though I’ve been pretty streaky with it. During the course of play however, we started to wonder how the automatic scoring works (even though wondering how the pinsetting works is a lot more interesting). HowStuffWorks says that many pinsetters have a ccd camera positioned with looks at the pins and relays the information. Alternatively, some pinsetters use “fingers” on the pinsetter itself to simply feel which pins are still standing after the roll.
I’ve also bowled in Brazil before, and there they have an interesting setup. The pins are actually hung on strings. And after the roll they are all stood up with the strings.