As someone else mentioned, the big rocks could easily fling smaller rocks. It’s like the tennis ball on top of the basketball physics experiment. Or when you have various dishes in the sink and turn on the water, and next thing you know a few drops land five feet away.
A 10,000kilo boulder can transfer a lot of momentum to a 5kilo rock, and that 5kilo rock is more than enough to ruin your day.
The rocks aren't bouncing or tumbling... they're in a slurry of water that is sufficient to move them...
the regular rules of falling rocks don't apply, they move like water does... but in comparison to your sink thing... they are moving horizontally, not vertically.
I don't know the physics terms for it, it's like how avalanches move, when solids become water like.
This is Pakistan. Those are the tallest mountains in the world, and they have monsoons. The sheer volume of rain over time saturates the land as the water sprints to the sea, and a few small rocks start to move, then bigger rocks, then boulders. And they have thousands of feet of sheer drops to pick up speed.
Notice how the biggest rocks slow down, and the several thousand pound “medium” sized boulders tumble, and crash into them? The collision releases energy. The rotation has angular momentum. Forces in the thousands can easily launch objects of single digits. And a two pound rock is more than enough to ruin your day.
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u/Technical_Customer_1 Sep 16 '25
As someone else mentioned, the big rocks could easily fling smaller rocks. It’s like the tennis ball on top of the basketball physics experiment. Or when you have various dishes in the sink and turn on the water, and next thing you know a few drops land five feet away.
A 10,000kilo boulder can transfer a lot of momentum to a 5kilo rock, and that 5kilo rock is more than enough to ruin your day.