Seven Skips and a Stone Too Good to Throw

Seven. I counted seven.

Possibly eight, but seven survives cross-examination, and I have stopped walking home to tell you about it.

My shoes are wet. There is a stone in my jacket pocket that I have already decided is too good to throw, a development that threatens the basic operation of this hobby.

An hour ago, someone beside the lake sent a stone skipping far enough that I stopped halfway through a sentence. They offered me one. Flat, rounded, comfortable between finger and thumb.

“Lower,” they said.

Straight into the water.

Another stone. Lower again. Three skips.

After that, the walk lost its intended purpose.

Suddenly the beach had inventory. Too thick. Awkward edge. Promising, until turned over. Excellent flat face attached to an inconvenient lump. I crouched there assessing rocks while the person responsible for this situation carried on with their afternoon.

The seven-skip throw came after a run of splashes. My finger caught the edge during release, the stone went out low, and instead of wobbling visibly it held its face steady.

Then those little separate touches across the water.

I actually laughed. Loudly enough to look around afterwards.

Yesterday, two unsupported pedal revolutions on the unicycle earned one tick in a notebook and an unreasonable amount of frustration. Today I have discovered another activity where a brief success immediately makes the surrounding failures more interesting.

Naturally, I looked up what the stone had done before getting back to the car.

Spin helps preserve its orientation. Water pushes against the submerged part, applying torque; the spinning stone resists being tipped through gyroscopic stability, as Bocquet explains. That gives it a chance of arriving at the next impact with its face still usefully aligned.

Useful information. Unfortunately my finger currently offers two settings: accidental competence and gravel disposal.

Also: there are two angles.

The downward path of the throw and the tilt of the stone’s face are separate things. Clanet, Hersen and Bocquet’s spinning-disc experiments found an optimum around 20° between the face and the water. I had encountered that number before and mentally assigned it to the throwing direction.

I tried holding a stone at roughly that tilt, then lowering my hand while keeping the face steady. Entirely manageable while standing still. During a throw, my wrist introduced amendments.

Two skips. Splash. Splash. Four.

Seven remained undefeated.

Now I keep replaying the release. Did I finally get more spin, or did that particular stone forgive something the others wouldn’t? I used up my closest comparisons before thinking to save them.

The one in my pocket has a lovely thin edge. I’ve taken it out twice while typing this.

The car is still uphill. There’s a clear patch of water just along the shore.