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DailyDirt: Skipping Across The Water

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Skipping objects like stones across a calm lake is fun when you’re a kid, but it also involves some interesting physics that could be useful for other applications. The Water Bouncing Ball toy can turn anyone into a pretty good “stone” skipper (though, maybe not hitting a record-setting 88 skips). Understanding how objects can skip across water could lead to better ways to travel across water, possibly making shipments cheaper or faster.

• An elastic ball can deform into an “ideal” disc-like shape when it skips and hits the surface of a pool of water. Studying the Waboba could result in better aquatic toys, but it could also help design a new kind of water-skipping vehicle or Wallis bomb. [url]
• The South American basilisk lizard can “walk” on water by taking 20 steps per second (about 3 mph). This lizard’s feet need to slap the water and produce an air cavity that keeps the reptile from sinking for about 10-20 yards, and if a person could pull off this trick, he/she would probably need to be running at about 65 mph. [url]
• Some researchers recommend skipping a stone so that it hits the water at a 20 degree angle. Physics researchers built a machine that threw aluminum discs across a pool of water with varying speeds and angles, and if the technique can be perfected, it might be a bit depressing to see another machine beating a human record by an insanely large margin. [url]

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Filed Under: basilisk lizard, jesus lizard, physics, skipping stones, waboba, walking on water, wallis bomb, water bouncing ball