All cue sports use hard and small billiard balls. Depending on the game, they differ in weight, size, type, and number. Friction coefficiency, hardness and resistance of the balls are very important for advanced billiard players.In the beginning, billiards were made out of wood, and then later were made of clay. Ivory became the preferred material around 1620s in the making of billiard balls. Because of the demand for them in 1800s, the slaughter of elephants for their ivory tusks was terribly high. One elephant tusk could make only a maximum of eight balls. With elephants so endangered, and the increasing public alarm, the billiard industry was challenged to find a substitute material.In 1869, John W Hyatt invented Nitrocellulose as a composition substance for billiard balls. This substance, later labeled Celluloid, was the first industrial plastic. Celluloid billiard balls, however, were found to be very unstable. Subsequently, other synthetic materials such as Crystalite, Bakelite and other plastic compounds were tested. Modern day ones are created to be chip and crack resistant. Among the materials most popularly used nowadays are Phenolic resin, clear acrylic and Polyster. There are many different types of billiard balls.
The fist example being: Carom billiards. The usual set of carom billiards contains a total of three: a red objet, a pure white cue ball, and a dotted cue for the adversary. They are 61.5 mm (2+7/16 inches) in diameter which are larger than pool balls. Some games use an extra object, like in the predominantly-Asian game, which uses four (the name literally means "four-balls") In the game of carom or carambole, billiard balls are the three or sometimes four used to play straight-rail, three-cushion, balkline, and related games on billiard tables that have no pockets, as well as English billiards which is played on tables with pockets. Carom have no numbers on them. They are colored as follows: Red object (two reds, in the game four-ball) White is used for the cue ball for player 1, White with a single spot cue ball for player 2 this could sometimes be yellow International pool Modern-style pool balls are used to play various pool games or pocket billiards, such as eight-ball, nine-ball and one-pocket. In North America, they are sometimes called simply as "billiard balls" (apart from carom players), and in the UK they are normally referred to as kelly pool or American balls.
Billiard Balls
These balls, used most widely throughout the world, are considerably smaller than carom billiards balls, yet slightly larger than British-style pool balls and substantially larger than those for snooker. According to WPA/BCA equipment specifications, the weight may be from 5.5 to 6 oz. (156 to 170 g) with a diameter of 2.25 in. (5.715 cm), plus or minus 0.005 in. (0.127 mm). The balls are numbered and colored as follows:1-Yellow, 2 -Blue, 3 -Red, 4 -Purple or pink in some ball sets, 5 -Orange, 6 -Green, 7 -Brown or burgundy or even tan in some ball sets, 8 -Black, 9 -Yellow and white, 10- Blue and white,11 -Red and white, 12 -Purple and white or pink and white in some ball sets, 13 -Orange and white, 14 -Green and white, 15 -Brown, or burgundy, and white;tan and white in some ball sets. The cue ball is white which may have sometimes one or more spots. Usually the balls 1 through 7 are regularly referred to as solids and balls 9 through 15 are called stripes though there are many of other slang names for each suit of balls. The 8 ball is not thought of as a solid even though they look similar. Some cue sports such as nine-ball do not make a distinction between the stripes balls and the solid ones. They rather use the numbers on the balls to decide in which order the ball must be pocketed.
In some billiard games like three-ball, neither the color nor the numbers of the balls is important. In eight-ball, straight pool, and other such games, all sixteen balls are used. While playing nine-ball, only the object balls 1 through 9 (plus the cue ball) are used. Pool games that are aired on television use billiard balls that are colored uniquely to make them clear to the viewers. The 4 ball in particular, is colored pink as a substitute for dark purple, and the 12 ball is white with a pink stripe, simply to make a distinction between their color and the black 8 ball, and in the same way the 7 ball and 15 ball use a light tan color instead of a dark brown. Television is the main reason the "measle" cue ball was invented, with its many spots on its surface, so that the spin on the ball was obvious to viewers. Historically, coin-operated pool tables like those found in bars and some pool halls have often used either a larger ("grapefruit") or denser ("rock", typically ceramic) cue ball, such that its extra weight makes it easy for the cue ball return mechanism to separate it from object balls (which are held until the end of the game and the table is paid again for another game) so that the cue ball can be returned for further play, should it be accidentally pocketed. Rarely in the US, some pool tables use a smaller cue instead. Modern tables usually employ a magnetic ball of regulation or near-regulation size and weight, since players have rightly complained for many decades that the heavy and often over-sized cues do not "play" correctly. British-style pool (blackball) British-style pool or otherwise known as blackball is characteristically played with red and yellow ones. In WPA blackball and WEPF or English-style eight-ball pool (not to be confused with the games of eight-ball or English billiards), fifteen are used, but are arrayed in two unnumbered groups, the reds (or sometimes blues) and yellows, with a white cue, and black 8. Besides from the 8 ball, shots are not called since there is no reliable way to recognize which exact ones to be pocketed. Because they are unnumbered they are wholly unsuited to certain pool games, such as nine-ball, in which the order is important. They are noticeably smaller than the American-style ones, and with a cue that is slightly smaller than the object balls, while the table's pockets are tighter to balance.
The WPA and the WEPF do not specify the size of them or the table, though it would seem league and tournament organizers are agreed upon for some guidelines in this sense. Most manufacturers that provide for this market provide 2 in. (5.08 cm) objects and 1+7/8 inches (4.76 cm) cues. The yellow-and-red sets are sometimes commercially referred to as "casino sets"; they were formerly used for eight-ball championships on television-regularly held in casinos. However, they used of casino sets, long before seen television, at least as early as 1908, as they were used for B.B.C. Co. Pool, the precursor of today's eight-ball.
Another example is the game of Snooker. At first glance, snooker sets look like a combination of American and British style pool. In all, there are 22 of them arranged as a rack of 15 unmarked reds, six colored placed at various predetermined spots on the table, and a white cue. The colored balls are sometimes numbered American-style, with their point values, for the amateur or home players. They are numbered as follows: 1-Yellow, 2-Green, 3- Brown, 4- Blue, 5-Pink, 6-Black. Snooker balls are officially standardized at 52.5 mm (approximately 2+1/15 in) in diameter within a tolerance of plus or minus 0.05 mm (0.002 in.) No standard weight is defined, but all balls in the set must be the same weight within a tolerance of 3 g.[7] However, several sets are in point of fact 2+1/16 in. (slightly under 52.4 mm), even from major manufacturers. Snooker sets are also offered with noticeably smaller-than-regulation balls (and even with ten instead of fifteen reds) for play on smaller tables, as small as half-size, and are allowed for use in some amateur leagues.
Facts About Billiard Balls!