Which Sport's Got the Biggest Balls? Quiz

Unsurprisingly, men's basketballs are the largest of all regular sports game balls, coming in at 24.35cm and weighing 608g. The shotput "ball" is far heavier, at 7260g, but with a diameter of only 12cm, it didn't make the cut for this quiz.

A soccer ball has many regulation sizes that range from 1-5 with 5 being the size for everyone from 12 - pro level. The pentagon/hexagon shape of the soccer ball can be traced back to reletively recent history when the "buckyball" was the rage and good old Buckminster Fuller proved the effectiveness of that construction holding a round shape better than any other.

Bowling balls are big and heavy; really heavy. They all are the same diameter, but a women's ball will weigh about 3-4 pounds less than a man's. Originally made of shaped wood, the balls are made of polyester, urethane, and resin. Also, an 1894 patent for a bowling ball only had two holes in it, not the conventional three of today.

Water Polo got its name, not as you might expect from the game of polo, but from the Tibetan word for "ball of rubber" or "Balti" which sounded like "polo" to the English ears. Just why they chose to call this game "water ball" using "polo" is unknown, but there is no evidence that the horse game had any relation to the water game.

As a kid who played soccer with volleyballs I seem to remember the volleyball being bigger than the soccer ball, but that might be because our school couldn't afford real soccer balls. Unlike the hexagon/pentagon shapes around the soccer ball, the volleyball ball is made of 18 strips of material (originally leather) organized into 6 groups of three.

This was changed in 2008 in favour of a ball with only 8 strips that now more closely resembles a basketball.

The use of the ball in gymnastics has a long history from catching and throwing, to juggling-like skills, to balance, and finally with rhythmic gymnastics as an element in artistic expression. Rhythmic gymnastics was recognized at the highest level in 1984 when it finally became an Olympic sport.

The rhythmic gymnastic ball has the greatest allowable difference in size of any of the balls listed, at 2cm.

The fact that fastpitch and slowpitch softball have different size balls is not surprising, smaller and tighter balls can be hit harder and go farther. However, there are actually three circumference sizes of softball balls. Fast - 11inches, Slow 12inches, and Gloveless 16inches.

The gloveless form of softball is mostly played in and around the Chicago and New York areas and seems to be built for smaller urban parks.

Croquet and polo are small fairly dense balls, made of hard plastic these days, but made of nearly anything else you can think of back in the day, mostly wooden materials. It has been everything from a bit of backyard fun, to a cutthroat game of screw your neighbour - stemming from the fact that you can use your shot to knock an opponent's ball out of position. Highly frustrating for the players and just think of the poor flamingos.

The sport itself is probably of Persian or Chinese origin with the first recorded game taking place over 2500 years ago between the Persians and the residents of what is now Turkey. The "Turks" were victorious.
As noted above, "polo" is simply a mispronunciation of the Tibetian word for "ball" and so polo simply means "ball". Polo balls have even been made of bamboo, wrapped leather, and Bakelite.

Pickleball, one of the world's newer sports, being invented as a backyard kids game in the 1960s, has taken over retirement homes and playgrounds nationwide in the USA. The popularity seems to have come from the fact that it is played on a smaller court and with a slightly less speedy ball than its older brother, tennis.

The history of the baseball ball is so intricate and involved that it probably deserves its own quiz (if no one has written it yet). The general outlines are this. The first regular play balls came in two sizes - tighter winding with more pop and looser winding, known as deadballs.

In the 1920s the balls were able to be machine made and so could be wound tighter and be more standardized. In 1934 the American and National leagues signed an agreement as to size, shape and denseness of the the balls and with only a few minor changes it has stayed that way ever since. A baseball ball is actually larger than a cricket ball by about 3mm.

A cricket ball and a baseball ball are made of nearly the same material, but with different proportions. The core of both balls are cork, but the cricket ball has more cork in it and so the ball "pops" more when hit. While close in size to a baseball ball, the cricket ball is significantly different in terms of its stitching.

A baseball ball is made of two figure-8 pieces of material stitched together in one long stitch. The cricket ball is stitched with six rows going around the "equator" of the ball and one going "pole-to-pole".

The golf ball is interesting, perhaps the most interesting of all the balls here. It has a core of rubber which makes it fly when hit like no other ball. But the truly genius part of the ball is its dimples which act on it a bit like the shape of an airplane's wings giving it lift and direction in flight.

This is a far cry from the leather balls filled with cow hair that were the original balls whacked about on Scottish greens.

Small and hollow, the lightest of all the balls on this list, you can really put "English" or spin on a table tennis ball that makes it seem like the ball has a mind of its own. In 2015 the use of celluloid in the manufacture of these balls was discontinued in favour of polymers.

In addition to size and weight, ping pong balls are judged fit for service by a bounce test. They must bounce between 24-26cm when dropped from a height of 30.5cm.

Finally, the smallest balls. Surprisingly, squash is the ball with the smallest regulation diameter, just edging out table tennis which actually used to hold the bottom spot, until a rules change following the 2000 Olympic games when the regulation size was increased from 38mm to 40mm.

While the balls are all the same size, the "speed" on them can vary wildly with six speeds of ball being recognized and denoted by the colour of ball played.