Stone Skipping Physics Simulation

The original idea for this project started as my fourth-year graphics final project (the first graphics course I ever took!). I got a good mark, but I always felt this project deserved revisiting. The renderer was a CPU software rasteriser I'd written from scratch, so it was painfully slow, and the scene I could afford to render was not particularly visually pleasing. In v2, I have rebuilt it on WebGL. It's orders of magnitude faster and much nicer to look at.

The model is based on Bocquet 2003, with a small modification to how torque is applied. The model is summarized in this document.

For the best experience, please try this demo on a computer.

References

  1. Bocquet, L. The physics of stone skipping. Am. J. Phys. 71, 150 (2003). arXiv
  2. Bocquet, L., Rosellini, L., Hersen, F. & Clanet, C. Skipping stones. J. Fluid Mech. 543 (2005).
  3. Clanet, C., Hersen, F. & Bocquet, L. Secrets of successful stone-skipping. Nature 427, 29 (2004).
  4. Nagahiro, S. & Hayakawa, Y. A theoretical and numerical approach to the "magic angle" of stone skipping. (2004). arXiv
  5. von Kármán, T. The impact on seaplane floats during landing. NACA TN 321 (1930).