Ducks, Drakes, and Stone Skipping

Did you know that the world record for Stone Skipping is 36 skips? Well, neither did I. In fact, I didn't even think it was something I wanted to know until correspondent Dan (Stork) Roddick told me I did.

Oddly enough, the happy pastime we sometimes know as Stone Skipping wasn't always known as such, but, according to the Official WEB Site of the Mackinac Island Stone Skipping & Gerplunking Club, by the much more mysterious moniker of "Ducks and Drakes." I quote from their equally official History of the Event:

"1583 J. Higins tr. Junius' Nomenciator (N.), A kind of sport or play with an oister shell or stone throwne into the water, and making circles yer it sinke, etc. It is called a ducke and a drake, and a halfe-penie cake. c 1626 Dick of Devon. i, ii, in Bullen 0. Pl. II. 14 The poorest ship-boy Might on the Thames make duckes and drakes with pieces Of eight fetchd out of Spayne. 1730 Swift Vind. Carteret Wks. 1755 V. II. 188 Scipio and Lelius . . often played at duck and drake with smooth stones on a river. 1829 Nat. Philos., Hydrostatics i. 2 (U.K.S.) The common play of making ducks and drakes, that is, throwing a.flat stone in a direction nearly horizontal against a surface of water, and thus making it rebound, proves the water to be elastic. 1842 P. Parley's Ann. III. 15 A shot made a duck- and-drake in the water. b. attrib., as duck-and-drake fashion, sort."

And now, 420 years later, we learn in this article, only recently posted in the venerable Manchester Guardian, citing an article only recently posted in Nature that, according to Christophe Clanet of the University of Marseille, it was discovered that "an angle of about 20 between the stone and the water's surface is optimal with respect to the throwing conditions and yields the maximum possible number of bounces." Of course. An angle of about 20. One should have known. Or, one should have downloaded this paper on the physics of stone skipping, and known even more (or not).

All of which is yet further evidence of the depth and breadth of what we are heir to, we who seek only a little more fun.