The Chameleon oil pattern is a pattern of
oil
An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...
used by the
Professional Bowlers Association
The Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) is the major sanctioning body for the sport of professional ten-pin bowling in the United States. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, the PBA membership consists of over 3,000 members worldwide. Member ...
in tournament play. It is among the numerous Animal Patterns.
The current rendition of the Chameleon pattern is 39 feet in length.
This forces players to play a specific part of the lane because of the way the oil is layered in "strips". The lane conditions dictate where the bowler should play. This is considered a "retro" approach to pattern designing.
The Chameleon pattern varies in a large range of scores (low to high), as does the bowlers' approach to the pattern. There isn't one specific bowling style that is most effective on this pattern, because there can be multiple target lines that dictate how much the ball will hook, and thus how much
curvature
In mathematics, curvature is any of several strongly related concepts in geometry. Intuitively, the curvature is the amount by which a curve deviates from being a straight line, or a surface deviates from being a plane.
For curves, the canonic ...
its path will have.
This oil pattern is named after the
chameleon
Chameleons or chamaeleons (family Chamaeleonidae) are a distinctive and highly specialized clade of Old World lizards with 202 species described as of June 2015. The members of this family are best known for their distinct range of colors, bein ...
because like a chameleon, which can change its color repeatedly, so too must a bowler be able to change his style of play.
Tournaments that used this pattern
References
External links
Chameleon Oil Pattern{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120512170003/http://bowling.about.com/od/oilpatterns/p/chameleon_oil_pattern.htm , date=2012-05-12 by Jef Goodger at about.com
PBA Oil Patterns: Chameleon
Ten-pin bowling