Why It's Almost Impossible to Skip a Stone 89 Times | WIRED

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] there's just something really satisfying about skipping a rock have you ever skipped one five or six times you might find yourself taking a little more seriously see if you can get seven eight nine consecutive skips turns out some people take stone skipping very seriously and actually compete to see who can skip the most or who can skip the farthest the current world record for most consecutive skips it's probably higher than you think try counting the skips in this footage of the world record just don't blink you catch it that was 88 skips here's the amazing thing models actually project the limit could be a lot higher than that today we're going to explore what that limit might be and why approaching or even exceeding it could be almost impossible to find out what it takes I skipped stones with the world record holder what was that seven eight you know the thing is I never count you never count hi duck talked to fluid dynamics with a physicist it hits the water and this back end sort of creates a wave and so that stone tends to rise up over that wave that it creates and that's what allows it to get a lift force that gets it back in the air again before the next impact and over and over again and brought both of them together all gorgeous to see if we can figure out how a world-class stone skipper get so many touches on the water and with the limit might actually be so we're here today with Kurt Steiner he's the world record holder in stone skipping specifically most consecutive skips on the water and how many skips was that was 88 that's so remarkable I can't even like I I'm not a really talented stone skipper but you know if I find myself at a lake with some stones I will do some skipping I think the most I've ever done is like 13 or 14 and like that makes me really really happy and proud so 88 is like how it is what makes you happy that counts more but I think we can get that number up a bit we flew Steiner and a couple boxes of rocks to Utah where he gave me some lessons on Xtreme stone skip Steinem makes it look easy but a good skip is more than just how hard you throw a stone or at which angle in fact it all starts with the stone itself okay that was closer like 15 16 I was gonna say 15 all right 15 all right so the most I've ever skipped before this is around 14 15 and here on my second throw I hit around 14 15 which tells me there's a lot to do with the rock you're using Steiner stones made a huge difference the worst Rock in this box is better than the nicest Rock I've ever skipped Steiner like a lot of top skippers is very particular about his stones he collects his from Lake Erie a few hours from his home in Pennsylvania a lot of question as to what kind of rock is best right the general category I use is just how many size is it spider isn't just an expert stone skipper he's an expert stone picker too this one is pretty similar to the one I would have set the record with he uses different shapes for different skips and different conditions people like triangles I used to like triangles but they just chew up the water too much you're always kind of weighing how much irregularity is in my rock against how hard am i throwing it against what water am i throwing it on to Sanner also showed me how to hold the stone for maximum skipping the first thing you ever want to do is determine which side is going to be down right and you generally want to go with this a flatter or slightly rounded if it's cupped or jagged put that up especially you want to look at the outer edge because the stone almost never touches except around a half inch around the edge but as I soon found out there's a lot more to skipping than just picking a good stone Steiner uses a variety of grips and stances for things like distance power and number of skips that's a high spin throw and then there's one here we're a little closer to the water that's a good way to get a lot of power in real clothes he's got a classic low skimming toss and an unusual overhand swing but basically you're just kind of try to swap the water as hard as you can with the rock as flat as possible he showed me how to get a little more whip on my skip lesson number one throw hard you've got a lot more strength than you're using he suggested trailing my hand yeah and don't start pivoting your waist around and your shoulder round until that left leg is a good foot out in front of you if you drag your arm right you see what I mean you're almost opening up and did the throw you know pinching up across here and then essentially your hand is catching back up to the rest of your body and will snap out better all right let's do that a shot okay that knot it actually looked a little better to me so now the third part is where it comes together here that's where you're gonna hit your target next Kurt had me aim for a first touch closer to the shore line did you notice how when you threw Rock the longer stays in the air the more it will roll over on its side that always always happening you can minimize that obviously by lessening the time in the air which is one reason you want to hit close so we're gonna be focusing on three things on this throw based on Kurt's feedback one I'm gonna be delaying the start of my throw so I can utilize more of my final mechanics to I'm gonna try to throw it hard and three I'm gonna try to make contact with the water really close to myself so that looked like high-teens to me and me immediate improvement and that was your first try yeah yeah yeah that's so cool it's every throw is a complete new puzzle so how is it that someone like Steiner can skip stones so many times to find out we asked at Ruskin who runs the splash lab at Utah State University in Logan yeah the splash lab welcome Thanks you've got a lot of really cool stuff in here yeah it looks like junk but we're using all of it yes it's a real lab and the work they do there is amazing and then this tank here where I shot bullets into it for my thesis my PhD thesis shot bullets into this yeah yeah absolutely they were modified 22 bullets is that what that hole is yeah yeah it's where we missed with that that's a misfire but yeah to study stone skipping Truscott and his team recorded Steiner hurling stones into a tank at thousands of frames per second to figure out how many skips are possible you have to first understand just how a skip works here's what happens so you have the stone it's in your hand and you throw it and as you do that you release it off of your fingers and that causes it to have some spin so this spin is really important we call it gyroscopic stabilization it essentially holds the attack angle of the of the rock with respect to say the surface of the water so then when you hit the water it deforms the water and pushes a wave out in front of it but the velocity of the stone is much faster than the wave that it creates and so it ends up rising up on that wave that it created and this causes a little lift force the rock is able to go back into the air and then back down and so this happens over and over and over again for a good rock skip right and that gyroscopic stabilization is what keeps that attack angle correct and friction is really the only other thing that's like reducing your ability to keep going the splash lab isn't the only one studying stones given a group of French scientists first figured out a model for ideal skipping in 2004 these researchers in France sound out that the optimal angle for a disc to skip on the water's surface is about 20 degrees for both the attack angle and also that velocity vector that coupled with you know how how fast it is blown as well as how much dyruskappa stabilization it has sort of set up the problem to find out what the maximum number of skips you can get or the number of skids you can get based on what that spin rate is and what that velocity is and that impact angle now you might think that studying stone skipping is a bit frivolous but Truscott says there are practical applications yeah definitely so a spacecraft it was proposed that would bounce off the atmosphere as it kind of came back towards Earth and use that to keep itself out you know if you want to land on say the moon of Titan you may want to you may want to come in for a soft landing knowing how skipping works might be a great way to do that to figure out how Steiner skips so many times Truscott in his lab also went into the field to gather data on his arm speed and the rotation of the stones spiders maximum speed is around 50 miles an hour his world-record skip was calculated at 43 miles per hour but he also has years of experience even his dud throws put my best efforts to shame but could someone best his record I've seen one or two people who have a technique that could maybe beat that but it's almost impossible now you might remember from our previous episode on the fastball that pitchers are about maxed out on speed at just over 100 miles per hour trusts get applied that metric to stone skipping and came up with some amazing calculations a really safe place on our chart puts you around 93 mile an hour throw because these are a little heavier than a than a baseball and and they're a little they have a bigger radius which makes their moment of inertia larger so you need a little more energy in that side of so 93 miles an hour is about where you're topping out you're gonna have about 2800 to 3,000 revolutions per minute and if you can get there that's of close to 164 joules you were gonna probably get close to 300 350 skips 350 yeah under the current idea yeah is that even possible under it already just seems ridiculous right I don't even know who could count that like I couldn't count 10 today Steiner thinks the limit is probably closer to 200 that's what the number says I'd like to go test it trust it and other scientists have modeled their projections using a perfectly round disc but as Steiner showed me there are no uniform stones because Mother Nature never sees fit to make two of the same thing I have to get on or about that so skipping a stone might seem like a simple thing but it's actually this beautifully complex mix of skill athleticism and fascinating physics it's such a miracle to me what's going on you know it's this weird dance of water and stone and air so will we ever see 300 consecutive skips or 350 that's a good question it'll probably take someone with a major-league caliber arm and Kurt Steiners devotion but what we're seeing these days from the world's top skippers is already almost impossible

Channel: WIRED

Views: 14,271,721

Rating: 4.878756 out of 5

Keywords: world record break, robbie gonzalez, skipping stones, skimming stones, stone skipping, stone skimming, easdale, kurt steiner, tadd truscott, how to skip stones, stone skip, how to skip stone, skipping stone, stoneskipping, best stone skipper, kurt steiner stone skipping, stone skipping world record, best skipping stones, skip stones, almost impossible, world record stone, stone skipping almost impossible, rock, skipping rock, rock skip, wired

Id: 6GWL8Gt-BsQ

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 31 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/anpolvora]

that's the real spirit of meal time videos.

[u/upandlow]

Can't wait to apply the teachings IRL.

1. Stone has to be thin and flat
2. 20 degree angle is optimal
3. Don't count your skips

[u/nauticalsandwich]

While an interesting video, its title has virtually nothing to do with its subject matter.