Stone Skipping the Scientific Way

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'"

Comments

Bouncing Bombs

[clymere]

This actually has a useful application. In WWII there were several dams in Germany used to give power to Germany's war industries. Britain decided they needed to destroy them...problem was that they were heavily guarded, protected by nets...basically, it would be impossible to destroy them with any convential weapon of the time. Their solution: A bouncing bomb. A special apparatus in the plane spun a cylindrical bomb(technically a mine) which was launhed from the plane at a specific distance and height(60 ft!) from the dam. It skipped across the water like a stone, past the dam's defenses, and rolled down the edge of the dam, detonating at a pre-determined depth underwater. Plenty more here: http://www.dambusters.org.uk/wallis.htm