You Suck at Skipping Rocks

Most of us are stoked if we can get a stone to skip more than 3 or 4 times. The world record holder at skipping stones has 88 skips. Here's why science says that number is way too low.

Hosted by: Reid Reimers (he/him)
----------
----------
Huge thanks go to the following Patreon supporters for helping us keep SciShow free for everyone forever: Matt Curls, Alisa Sherbow, Dr. Melvin Sanicas, Harrison Mills, Adam Brainard, Chris Peters, charles george, Piya Shedden, Alex Hackman, Christopher R, Boucher, Jeffrey Mckishen, Ash, Silas Emrys, Eric Jensen, Kevin Bealer, Jason A Saslow, Tom Mosner, Tomás Lagos González, Jacob, Christoph Schwanke, Sam Lutfi, Bryan Cloer
----------
Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet?

#SciShow #science #education #learning #complexly
----------
Sources:

Image Sources:

[RobotShield]

Fun fact, the world skimming championship bases your ability on distance not number of skips. You have to have a minimum of 3 skips but after that the winner is who got the stone furthest

[Narmatonia]

We've got robot arms that can bowl strikes everytime, now we need robot arms for perfect stone skipping

[TheUglyPrimadonna]

I’ll never forget how when I was a young teen in the early 2000s we took a family trip to the Orinoco River Delta in Venezuela. I played a bit with some of the local indigenous kids when we waited on a boat transport. I skipped rocks on the river like an amateur, but they were so impressed, had no idea this was possible and wanted me to show them how it’s done. One could assume that living by a river all your live with little to no “modern” entertainment, they’d know about this… 🤔

[kinexkid]

Back in my college days, the dorm was right on the American river. I'd spend so much time out there just skipping rocks and smoking and enjoying nature. My highest skip was something like 30-40. All my friends tried to just throw it as hard and flat as they could. But I fugured it out and made it look almost too easy. I won a few bets and small amounts of weed with that trick 😂

[evelynstedman]

I have what I consider the premium skipping rock stashed in the glove box of my old truck. Been there for 25 years. Too good to throw

[geodkyt]

The comment about models being simplified reminds me of the old physics staple, "Assume a spherical cow..."

[rahn]

Follow up video: How to hunt for the perfect skipping stone... so that you'll never actually throw it into the water.

[Gensei-Kihara]

well, youre not wrong, i've never successfully skipped a rock. everybody used to make fun of me for it, and now i'm huddled into a corner and rocking back and forth hugging myself as i relive the trauma. and thats why i love you scishow lol

[monhi]

That’s super interesting about the flat rocks, I always assumed they worked best because of their shape aka the smooth flat bottom itself. But it sounds like what you’re saying its really more about their low weight yet nearly maxed out surface area. Granted that’s still shape related and obvious, I just never sat down to put proper thought into exactly why

[kendalldarveaux]

If you think about it, all of the best skipping stones are probably in the middle of the lake.

[LMacNeill]

This sounds like something @MarkRober needs to tackle. I could totally see him engineering a robot that'd break the world record for skips. 🙂

[nikm]

I KNOW THE PERFECT SKIPPING STONE MATERIAL!!!

Pork cartilage... Whatever lives in that water will eat it or somehow benefit from it. It's smooth af and low density

[Dfarrey]

I do, indeed, suck at skipping rocks. Once I completely missed the water and threw the rock directly at my sister. It was an accident, I swear!

[NewCliche]

We need a SciShow Psych revival to explain why I click on things telling me that I suck at doing them 😢

[mrdonetx]

I hate to disagree I'm sure some big brain people took a lot of time to study this, however according to my grandmother skipping stones is magic that only a few can master. Other than making a young me believe in magic and other wondrous things a child's imagination can conjure, she was really good at skipping stones.

[JonathanLit]

Who researches skipping rocks? Who are these researchers? I want to know all about these people. Now THAT sounds really interesting!

[Electric]

Sounds like someone should make a stone skipping robot and use it in a really big indoor pool.

[sarahmanicom]

My mental health isn't the best these days. I want skipping rocks to help. It doesn't.
Thank you for the energy momentum conservation words. I had left high school before the principle was discussed.
I fell off of the back of a moving vehicle when I was sixteen. At first I thought it was some crazy feat of math, considering I hit my head and now I don't really have a cowlick anymore.
I still haven't learned about it, but now I'm realizing people are people; I couldn't exactly not follow the curve of my own skeleton when I fell on my tailbone and still had no impediment, horizontally.

I had a thought last night: what if the speed of light is just the tenacity of the universe? Black holes rip through space and time literally, like a fabric, as they're too dense and have too much spin for the fabric to handle. The red shift in light happens as the fabric is being stretched, and unevenly so, like when first stretching canvas.
Every beam of light travelling across the universe isn't travelling through space and time, but it's actually space and time being unwoven as an event. Or woven. Or both.

[danp]

Before i blew my shoulder out and had to have surgery i was crazy good at skipping rocks. Regularly got a hundred or so feet distance on flat water, had many rocks literally glide across the water to the point measuring individual skips became problematic when conditionswerefavorable, and even skipped multiple rocks simultaneously.

[lordmagic]

I can regularly skip 20-30 times, with average probably around 10. I skip on the river by the sea, so there is always some waves. Good angle, good spin and 'loose' wrist are key ingridients.