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Published online 14 July 2006 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news060710-15
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What shape is a pebble?
Scientists head for the beach to find out.
A seaside conundrum has been solved: what shape is a pebble?
The answer, of course, is 'pebble-shaped'; but now, thanks to research by a team in France and the United States, it's possible to define what that means.
Technically speaking, says material physicist Doug Durian of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and his colleagues, a pebble is a rounded body with a near-gaussian distribution of curvatures.
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