maritime and ocean engineering tagged posts

A high-speed camera captured this image of an elastic sphere bouncing off the water surface in a tank. Credit: Chris Mabey

Skipping stones across the water surface can be tricky. So why is it so easy to get such impressive water-skipping performance from an elastic ball? Researchers say they have answers that may reveal a lot about water impact physics – important in naval applications and maritime and ocean engineering.

In collaboration the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in R.I., and Brown University, Assistant Prof Tadd Truscott’s team at USU’s Splash Lab have unraveled the physics of how elastic spheres bounce on water more easily than rigid ones. They uses high-speed cameras to capture images of elastic spheres bouncing across tanks of water in a laboratory...