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
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Curmudgeon Alert
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"another machine beating a human record by an insanely large margin"
If you put a five-year old child by itself next to a machine also by itself, the child will outskip the machine.
The machine, of course, won't do anything.
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Re: "another machine beating a human record by an insanely large margin"
Its great they want to understand the physics of skipping objects, but realistically, a human body is more suited to throwing a massive variety of objects, more than any constructed mechanical arm, by a wide margin. And until we can figure out how to improve on that, it won't change. We're still constructing tools for specific tasks with narrow rulesets. Within those rulesets, yes you can outperform a human. On a single task. Can that same machine flip an omelet, write a sentence in flowing cursive script, open a jar of peanutbutter, and juggle a pair of oranges? Cause with a little practice, every human can do all of that and still skip a rock across a pond.
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Re: Re: "another machine beating a human record by an insanely large margin"
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Machine beating man...
If not, what about the Dam Buster raid? Machine (Lancaster Bombers, with spinning motors for the bombs) dropped the bombs at speed and they then bounced across the Dam lakes until the hit the dams, travelling an outrageously greater distance than any person can skip a stone. The bombs were also far heavier than any person could lift.
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Re: Machine beating man...
BW: "Usually he pitched them about two thirds of the way between his guns and the target. But there is some evidence to suggest that during the Battle of the Nile he dismissed the French flagship with a yorker."
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