Stone Skipping

Minnesota has many lakes. The license plates indicate that there are 10,000 but I’ve read that there are 22,000 or so. But they have a common characteristic, they are all glacial lakes.

This is an important attribute as glaciers provide copious amounts of flat, round rocks. They’re a result of the constant flow and grinding of the water over millions of years. The result is an unlimited supply of skipping stones. I’ve thrown many, many skipping stones in my life. I’ll bet I’ve even skipped a stone six times, maybe even seven. I definitely don’t remember any skips of eight.

Until I created my Blog and began to look for silly subjects like stone skipping, I never realized there was formality to this endeavor. There is even an official definition of the sport:

“Stone skipping is a pastime which involves throwing a stone with a flattened surface across a lake or other body of water in such a way that it bounces off the surface of the water. The object of the game is to see how many times a stone can be made to bounce before sinking.”

And synonyms, and associations, and contests too!

“The pastime is also called stone skimming, stone skiting, and ducks and drakes in the UK; and stone skiffing in Ireland. The North American Stone Skipping Association (NASSA), formed in 1989 and based in Driftwood, Texas, holds world championships each year; the next is expected to be held at Playa Ros beach in Spain. A similar event takes place every year in Easdale, Scotland”.

Do you figure Driftwood Texas has a lot of glacial skipping stones?

There are even world records. But I definitely have a difficult believing that someone not only skipped, but documented a skip of 38 times. Doesn’t it require a Guinness Official present at the record attempt? Doesn’t Guinness make beer?

The world record according to the Guinness Book of Records is 38 skips, set by Jerdone Coleman-McGhee at the NASSA world championship in 1992. The 2001 champion was Australian Iain MacGregor

There are even physics studies on the whole phenomenon:

Research undertaken by a team led by French physicist Lydéric Bocquet has discovered that an angle of about 20° between the stone and the water's surface is optimal. Bocquet and his colleagues were surprised to discover that changes in speed and rotation did not change this fact. Earlier research reported by Bocquet calculated that the world record of 38 rebounds required a speed of 12 m/s (25 mph), with a rotation of 14 revolutions per second.

I definitely think the Guinness people, along with me, should stick to beer.