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Stone Skipping the Scientific Way

Posted by michael on from the hop-skip-and-jump dept.

Quirk writes "National Geographic has a bit on the scientific analysis of stone skipping. Using a machine launching aluminum disks Lyderic Bocquet, a physics professor at the University of Lyon, and his colleagues discovered the 'magic angle' of 20 degrees as that required to maximize skipping. 'Jerdone Coleman McGhee of Wimberley, Texas, holds the current Guinness Book of World Records title for a 1992 toss that yielded an impressive 38 bounces across the Blanco River in central Texas'"

4 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Well that's all fine and dandy... by PoitNarf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    that a human can skip one 38 times, but there is no mention on how many times the machine they built was able to do it. Just watch, this is gonna lead to some wacky robotics competition where teams try to construct different robotic launchers to see which can skip more times or longer distance.

    --

    "0101100101? It's just jibberish. *looks in mirror, gasps* 1010011010@!? AHHHHHH!!"
  2. A well researched problem already? by wrmrxxx · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article suggests that this is the first time this type of problem has been scientifically studied. As far as I know this kind of problem has been very thoroughly studied for aerospace purposes: a planet's atmosphere is the pond, and a spacecraft is the stone. A google search for 'skip trajectory' shows up lots of serious research.

  3. You mean like dambusters? by adept256 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The massive spinning bombs that were designed to bounce along the water before sinking and exploding in front of a dam? That technology was developed and used successfully in world war II by the english.

    --

    I ran a benchmark on my quantum computer, now I can't find it anywhere!
  4. Dam Busting Bombs by _aa_ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I recall watching a documentary about Barnes Wallis, a British scientist who during WWII invented and "perfected" a dam busting bomb. A rather large (multi ton) spinning cylinder full of explosives that would be dropped from a plane at remarkably low altitude over water directly at a dam at high speed, resulting in the bomb's skipping, like a stone, until it would collide with the dam. The bomb would then sink, but it's spinning motion would keep it tight to the dam until it exploded.

    Wallis' research involved countless stone skipping tests, that inevitably resulted in the discovery of the perfect angle.

    The bombs themselves enjoyed marginal success, succesfully destroying 1 of 3 objectives, if I'm not mistaken.

    http://simscience.org/cracks/dambusters.html - Interesting videos and more information.