The Latest Study? Skip It
Just in time for spring training comes word of a really scientific study about skipping stones. Not everyone knew this pastime needed scrutiny. You pick up a round, flat stone, wrap your forefinger and thumb around it and sidearm that baby over water. The winning stone skips the most times, then sinks into oblivion. Good job. The winner owns bragging rights for seconds. The loser tries again until the arm tires or the lake is filled.
Stone-skipping is one of the most delicious wastes of time imaginable. It doesn’t work well if winter temps have frozen the aforesaid water. But idly skipping stones in flowing or placid waters has spanned millenniums. Teen caveboys probably got in trouble for skipping stones and scaring woolly mammoths. Some people speculate that mountain rivers full of smooth rocks were actually sites of ancient stone-skipping championships before TV needed weekend sports shows. Where do you suppose the idea of throwing an Olympic discus came from?
Since they’re not yet fixing Iraq, and vin and fromage sales are off, a French research team with a lot of time on its hands studied the perfect impact angle and speed of round, spinning objects tossed over water. Tip the stone down, the leading edge catches the water and tumbles into ignominy. Bad form. Launch the front edge too high or slowly and the orb will stall and flip backward. Also embarrassing. And you get no transient trail of perfect rings advancing out into the water to appreciate for a few moments.
According to their report in a recent Nature magazine, the researchers used special cameras to find out all kinds of obvious things. They determined the magic angle for maximum skip is 20 degrees, and spinning increases the bounce; the faster the spin, the more the bounces. The world record is believed held by Jerdone Coleman-McGhee, who in 1992 skipped one stone 38 times on the Blanco River in Texas. He had a world-class arm but may have been aided by warm water. The researchers also say a 45-degree angle dooms the flying circular stone to instant sinking. That produces a big ker-plunk, disqualifying skippers but ideal for splashing nearby friends or letting boyfriends win a lazy beach competition.
Unbeknownst to many females, stone-skipping has played an important role in the fatherly education of future husbands. Because it’s so difficult for males to sit down and talk face to face about private matters, countless dads have used waterfront stone-skipping expeditions as the excuse to get sons off quietly and casually pass on important information about the aforesaid opposite gender. More-successful stone-skipping will prolong these productive instructions. So, merci encore to the French for these vitally useless stone-skipping data.