Name: SMBC Physics: Why are stones round? feat. Zach Weiner
Uploaded: 2020-03-30T02:43:02.000Z
Duration: 1 min 39 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

Have you ever noticed that some rounded stones are almost spherical, while others are kind

Transition words & phrases

The spherical stones form that way because they never have the chance to settle into

a preferred orientation: they're either sloshing around in pot holes, or rolling along the

bottom of a river, or if they're small enough, getting blown around by the wind.

Since they have no preferred orientation, these stones get weathered the same amount

on all sides, and they'll end up looking the same from all sides as well.

But for flat stones, even if they're a smooth disk perfect for skipping, there's obviously

a preferred, or special, orientation - the direction perpendicular to, or 'away from'

It's kind of like the difference between dumplings and biscuits.

A dumpling is a lump of dough dropped in a pot of water, and gravity doesn't really affect

its orientation very much when it's rolling and bobbing about.

A biscuit, on the other hand, is a lump of dough pulled down by gravity onto a baking

sheet, so it tends to be flat and has a clear top and bottom.

And while the details are ultimately more complicated, when sedimentary rock forms,

it forms layers, or when stones too heavy to roll are worn down by abrasion at the bottom

of a river or lake, they tend to be worn a bit flat.

In both cases the preferred direction is dictated by gravity.

And gravity is also why we build buildings in layers, with a basement, floors and a roof

– if we were in outer space without a preferred direction from gravity, we'd probably just