Death pebbles: a theoretical analysis

Well, not really, but PRL is going to be publishing a study of pebble shape. You can download the arXiv version of the paper here.

Here is the abstract:


\Paper: cond-mat/0607061
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2006 21:14:30 GMT (1109kb)

Title: What is in a pebble shape?
Authors: D.J. Durian, H. Bideaud, P. Duringer, A. Schroder, F. Thalmann, C.M. Marques
Comments: Phys. Rev. Lett. (to appear)
Subj-class: Soft Condensed Matter
\ We propose to characterize the shapes of flat pebbles in terms of the statistical distribution of curvatures measured along the pebble contour. This is demonstrated for the erosion of clay pebbles in a controlled laboratory apparatus. Photographs at various stages of erosion are analyzed, and compared with two models. We find that the curvature distribution complements the usual measurement of aspect ratio, and connects naturally to erosion processes that are typically faster at protruding regions of high curvature.
\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0607061 , 1109kb)


I eagerly await a paper that analyzes the dynamics of a ping pong ball when it falls on death pebbles. Now that's some seriously chaotic dynamics!