A couple of years ago we shared a story about Kurt Steiner, who still holds a Guinness World Record for "most skips of a skimming stone"—he skipped a rock a whopping 88 times at Red Bridge, near Kane, Pennsylvania, on September 6, 2013! Guinness World Record explains:
Kurt, being the previous record holder for this category from 2002-2007, has been practicing for the past few years to improve his skills. He has collected more than 10,000 "quality rocks" and has sorted each according to its type, to prepare for the best possible throw. He looks for stones "that weigh between 3 – 8 ounces… that are very smooth (they don't have to be perfectly round), flat bottoms and are between 1/4 – 5/16th of an inch thick."
I recently stumbled across a video posted by WIRED where Steiner explains the physics behind stone skipping, and it's one of the most fascinating and informative things I've ever watched. WIRED describes the video:
Kurt Steiner is record holding champion stone skipper—and a master of the physics that underpin the sport. A labor of love that's evolved into a world-class passion, see where Kurt harvests his preferred rocks, the qualities he seeks in them, and each factor he considers in order to throw like a pro.
In the video, Kurt discusses various aspects of the process of skipping a stone that he has to take into account—including the speed at which he'll throw it, the spin he'll give it, and the various angles he has to balance, including tilt angle, attack angle, and twist angle. He also talks about how he must be mindful of the direction of the wind, the water's surface, and his footing. He also describes the "makings of a really good rock," which include things like a flat surface and a little bit of a curved top edge that is a bit sharp but not too sharp (stone skipping is clearly both a science and an art). In the video, he demonstrates various rocks that are good choices and shows us some of his throwing techniques as he explains the physics of it all.
In addition to being a world-record-holding stone skipper, Steiner is also a pretty darn good philosopher, which is evident when he describes stone skipping as:
" . . . a simple thing [that], through a mastery, becomes a really visual, spiritual kind of art form. It's a way of making joy out of nothing. And that's can't be valueless, right?"
Previously:
• Meet the world's greatest stone skipper
