question: How is it possible to skip a stone 88 times on water, according to the laws of physics?
comment: Water is incompressible, it can't be squeezed. In a high-speed impact it acts very much like a solid surface, which is why stones can be skipped off its surface. Water can't be pushed out of the way quickly. Even heavy objects such as bombs and battleship shells can skip if the impact angle is shallow. > is there a theoretical limit to how many times it can skip? There are limits as the stone will lose momentum with every impact. A smooth stone will skip better as it is less likely to start tumbling on impact. A tumbling stone is more likely to dig in and lose more momentum. Spinning the stone also improves stability. The other factors at play are speed and impact angle, a shallow angle is required for good skipping. Ultimately the number of skips is limited by the strength of the human arm. A throwing machine could do better but eventually you'd reach the point where the stone would disintegrate on impact.
passages: The world record for the number of skips "Guinness Book of Records" is 88 by Kurt "Mountain Man" Steiner, (b. 1965). The cast was achieved on September 6, 2013 at Red Bridge in the Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania. The previous record was 65 skips, by Max Steiner (no relation to K. Steiner), set at Riverfront Park, Franklin, Pennsylvania. Before him, the record was 51 skips, set by Russell Byars on July 19, 2007, skipping at the same location. Kurt Steiner also held the world record between 2002 and 2007 with a throw of 40 skips, achieved in competition at Franklin, PA. The US Stone Skipping champion 2018 at Franklin was Keisuke Hashimoto (Japan), at Mackinac Island Mich 2018 it was David Kolar.
   A stone skipping championship of a different nature takes place every year in Easdale, Scotland, where relative distances count as opposed to number of skips, as tends to be the case outside the US. Since 1997, competitors from all over the world have taken part in the World Stone Skimming Championships in a disused quarry on Easdale Island using sea-worn Easdale slate of maximum 3" diameter. Each participant gets three throws and the stone must bounce/skip at least twice to count (ie 3 water touches minimum).The Guinness World Record for the furthest distance skimmed using natural stone stands at 121.8m established by Dougie Isaacs (Scotland). For a female it is 52.5m by Nina Luginbuhl (Switzerland). The records were made on the 28th of May 2018 at Abernant Lake, Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales.
   Research undertaken by a team led by French physicist Lydéric Bocquet 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, it just allowed the stone to be in balance and to continue with a straight and uniform movement, due to gyroscopic effect. Work by Hewitt, Balmforth and McElwaine has shown that if the horizontal speed can be maintained skipping can continue indefinitely. Earlier research reported by Bocquet calculated that the world record of 38 rebounds set by Coleman-McGhee, unchallenged for many years, required a speed of 12 m/s (25 mph), with a rotation of 14 revolutions per second.
   Stone skipping
  
  Stone skipping (or stone skimming) is the art of throwing a flat stone across water in such a way (usually Sidearm) that it bounces off the surface, preferably many times. The objective of the game is to see how many times a stone can bounce before sinking.
  
  Section::::Championships and records.
   Two brothers argued over how they should split their land, some of which was good and some bad. The king sent riddles to them: whoever guessed the riddles would get good land. The first riddle was what was the fastest thing in the world. The stupid brother's daughter told him what to say; his brother guessed a bird or a horse, and the stupid brother said the mind. The second riddle was what was the heaviest thing in the world; the clever brother guessed stone or iron, and the stupid brother repeated his daughter's answer: fire because no one could lift it. The third was what was the most important thing in the world; the clever brother guessed bread or money, and the stupid brother repeated his daughter's answer: ground, because they needed it to stand on.
   The enslaved Thracians swirled the sand and gathered golden grains, others like ants were tossing the stones to the top of the heaps, staggering, falling under the slashing whips. The heaps were growing fast. The legend tells that the masters of the Romans brought a blind granny to swing ninety nine baby swings while the women worked. She swung all the swings and cursed with the words "God is not foolish, the King is not righteous. If we could get rid of this weight..."
   Ten of the initial 30 stones moved in the first winter with Mary Ann (stone A) covering the longest distance at . Two of the next six monitored winters also had multiple stones move. No stones were confirmed to have moved in the summer, and in some winters, none or only a few stones moved. In the end, all but two of the monitored stones moved during the seven-year study. At in diameter, Nancy (stone H) was the smallest monitored stone. It also moved the longest cumulative distance, , and the greatest single winter movement, . The largest stone to move was .
   Section::::Scientific explanation.
  
  An early explanation of the physics of stone-skipping was provided by Lazzaro Spallanzani in the 18th century.
  
  The stone generates lift in the same manner as a flying disc, by pushing water down as it moves across the water at an angle. Surface tension has very little to do with it. The stone's rotation acts to stabilize it against the torque of lift being applied to the back.
   BULLET::::- Coleman, Jerry. "The Secrets of Stone Skipping", Stone Age Sports Publications, January 1996
  
  BULLET::::- Lorenz, Ralph. "Spinning Flight: Dynamics of Frisbees, Boomerangs, Samaras and Skipping Stones", Copernicus, New York, September 2006
  
  Section::::External links.
  
  BULLET::::- John Zehr's Patent, "Skipping stones and method of use thereof",US Patent 4553758
  
  BULLET::::- John "Skippy" Kolar Skipumentary
  
  BULLET::::- NASSA homepage
  
  BULLET::::- Easdale's Stone Skimming World Championships
  
  BULLET::::- World Championships on the BBC
  
  BULLET::::- Wales Open Stone Skimming Championships
  
  BULLET::::- Mackinac Island Stone Skipping & Gerplunking Club
  
  BULLET::::- The Stone Skipping Hall of Fame (virtual)
  
  BULLET::::- European Championships Stone Skimming
   A balance of very specific conditions is thought to be needed for stones to move:
  
  BULLET::::- A flooded surface
  
  BULLET::::- A thin layer of clay
  
  BULLET::::- Wind
  
  BULLET::::- Ice floes
  
  BULLET::::- Warming temperatures causing ice breakup
  
  Section::::Research history.
   Match Seven: Shaun Wallace v. Olav Bjortomt: Olav Bjortomt was beaten by Shaun Wallace in a surprise defeat. Olav won 4 head-to-heads to Shaun's 1. However, he slipped up in the final round when not taking Chris's advice on the question 'On which river are the sailing vessels Nuggers used?' Olav incorrectly chose the Indus, whereas the answer was the Nile. This allowed Shaun to complete a 5–4 victory when he answered his fifth question correctly.
   BULLET::::- Dubrovnik (Walls of Dubrovnik – Fort Bokar)
  
  BULLET::::- Dubrovnik (Fort Imperial – Stone Cross)
  
  At the Roadblock, one team member had search and correctly find one of eight stones out of 150, and fit it into the rock wall at the fort being rebuilt from the Croatian War of Independence. Once the stone is correctly laid, the stonemason would hand them their next clue.
   BULLET::::- : Command – along with "hurry" – shouted by the skip to tell the sweepers to sweep harder and faster
  
  BULLET::::- : A stone that is thrown harder than required and will probably slide too far
  
  BULLET::::- : Slow ice on which stones take more initial force to travel a similar distance as on fast (keen) ice "(see keen ice)"
   required to transport these blocks in suspension was about 1
  
  million m, with a duration of maximum flow of about 10
  
  minutes.
  
  Section::::Evidence.:Ice-rafted blocks.
  
  Ice-rafted boulders up to several meters in diameter.
  
  Section::::Evidence.:Eddy deposits.
  
  Eddy deposits are seen along the Katun River between Inya and Mali Yaloman.
  
  Section::::Multiple flood hypothesis.
  
  Dating of the gravel bars has yielded at least 3 times of deposition, suggesting that multiple floods occurred.
  
  Section::::The current understanding.
   This is accomplished by recognizing that on a fresh-water lake, the iceberg floats until the volume of its ice-rafted debris exceeds 5% of the volume of the iceberg. Therefore, a correlation between the iceberg size and the boulder size can be established. For example, diameter boulder can be carried by a high iceberg and could be found stranded at higher elevations than a boulder which requires a high iceberg.
  
  Section::::Formation of erratics.:Large erratics.
   Section::::Magic squares.
  
  Magic squares have been studied for over 2000 years. In 2007, the idea of studying the water retention on a magic square was proposed. In 2010, a competition at Al Zimmermann's Programing Contests produced the presently known maximum retention values for magic squares order 4 to 28. Computing tools used to investigate and illustrate this problem are found here.
  
  There are 4,211,744 different retention patterns for the 7×7 square. A combination of a lake and ponds is best for attaining maximum retention. No known patterns for maximum retention have an island in a pond or lake.
   News articles reported the mystery solved when researchers observed rock movements using GPS and time-lapse photography. The research team witnessed and documented rock movement on December 20, 2013, that involved more than 60 rocks, with some rocks moving up to 224 m between December 2013 and January 2014 in multiple movement events. These observations contradicted earlier hypotheses of winds or thick ice floating rocks off the surface. Instead, rocks move when large ice sheets a few millimeters thick floating in an ephemeral winter pond start to break up during sunny days. These thin floating ice panels, frozen during cold winter nights, are driven by light winds and shove rocks at up to 5 m/min (0.3 km/h). Some GPS-measured moves lasted up to 16 minutes, and a number of stones moved more than five times during the existence of the playa pond in the winter of 2013-14.
   Below is a table of all the teams that have participated in the qualifying rounds or the entire MarbleLympics in the series' three-year run, and their overall medal records.
  
  The following seven teams have qualified for all four MarbleLympics to date: Mellow Yellow, Oceanics, O'rangers, Pinkies, Savage Speeders, Team Galactic, and Thunderbolts.
  
  *during the 2018 Marblelympics Team Momo and Team Primary formed Team Momary following an injury of Momomomo, the team Captain of Team Momo.
  
  Section::::Current records.
  
  Below is a list of current records. The score is followed by the record-holding marble and (in parentheses) the team.
   BULLET::::- Anundshög double stone ship at "Anundshög" (from the Old Norse "haugr", mound) has a total length of and one of the ships is wide. In the same area there are several smaller stone ships.
  
  BULLET::::- is Sweden's second largest stone ship, measuring in length. It is, however, the most remarkable one as it is made of 24 enormous boulders, weighing about 25 tonnes each.
   Next were the boys and with winning the fortune hunters advantage had to choose one team member to award one extra shot to. They chose Jordan so when it came to his turn he had 4 shots at the target instead of 3. The first adventurer swinging for the boys was James, but his rocks didn’t smash even though he threw his rock quite close to the centre of the target. Next was Zach and with his second throw he got quite close to the target centre, he then said to James that he crushed the rocks in his hand so they would easily smash. It was then Peter and with all his rocks smashing he was lucky but none of them were as close as Zach’s. Dilhan was next and only threw his rocks near the bottom. Last was Jordan with his 4 shots, but when he was preparing to throw his third rock he put his finger in the rock, and with all his throws barely managed to hit the board.
   which is approximately 43 quintillion. To put this into perspective, if one had one standard-sized Rubik's Cube for each permutation, one could cover the Earth's surface 275 times, or stack them in a tower 261 light-years high.
  
  The preceding figure is limited to permutations that can be reached solely by turning the sides of the cube. If one considers permutations reached through disassembly of the cube, the number becomes twelve times larger:
   He arranged for 40 children to play a game that involved turning a small fishing reel as quickly as possible. He found that those who played the game in pairs turned the reel faster than those who were alone. Triplett's design involved the creation of two groups (A and B) with the sequence of trials differing for each.
   BULLET::::- For long range, the iwisa throwing club was paired against the ball and chain. After missing the target on the first two tries, the ball and chain successfully shattered an ice dummy with enough force to kill a human. The ball and chain struck the ice sculpture in a manner that would have crushed the windpipe and broken the sternum on a person, possibly contusing the heart. A pressure map situated beneath the ice sculpture measured the ball and chain's force at roughly 3200 joules of energy; roughly equivalent to being struck by a motorcycle going at 16 mph. The iwisa, meanwhile, shattered a glass plate and two glass orbs at a velocity of 16 feet per second, or 32 mph. The accuracy, speed, and range of the iwisa earned it the win.
   Stone of Tmutarakan
  
  The Stone of Tmutarakan () is a marble slab engraved with the words "In the year 6576 [ A.M., 1068 A.D] the sixth of the Indiction, Prince Gleb measured across the sea on the ice from Tmutarakan to Kerch 14,000 sazhen" («В лето 6576 индикта 6 Глеб князь мерил море по леду от Тмутороканя до Корчева 14000 сажен»).
   Ralph Lorenz, a planetary scientist, investigated the phenomenon in 2006. To illustrate the "ice raft" theory, Lorenz developed an experiment using a kitchen-table model using a container to show how heavy rocks might glide across the surface of the lake bed. A bed of sand is added to the bottom of the Tupperware, a rock is placed on the sand, and water is added until only a small edge of the rock sticks out. After putting the container in the freezer until the water is frozen, then removing the container and letting the ice begin to melt, Lorenz could end up with a small raft of floating ice with a rock embedded in it. All he had to do was gently blow on the floating ice sheet to get the rock to drag across the sand. While these experiments, and the buoyant lifting of rocks, are doubtless relevant on some occasions, the January 2014 trail-forming events did not appear to rely on buoyancy, but the rocks were simply bulldozed.
  
raw_presuppositions: It is possible to skip a stone 88 times on water
raw_corrections: The number of skips is limited as the stone will lose momentum with every impact.