In 2006, Ralph Lorenz, a NASA scientist investigating weather conditions on other planets, took an interest in Death Valley. Lorenz was particularly keen on comparing the meteorological conditions of Death Valley to those near Ontario Lacus, a vast hydrocarbon lake on Titan, a moon of Saturn.
But while investigating Death Valley, he became intrigued by the enigmatic sailing stones of Racetrack Playa.
Lorenz developed a kitchen-table model — using an ordinary Tupperware container — to show how the rocks might glide across the surface of the lake bed.
"I took a small rock and put it in a piece of Tupperware, and filled it with water so there was an inch of water with a bit of the rock sticking out," Lorenz told Smithsonian.com.
After putting the container in the freezer, Lorenz ended up with a small slab of ice with a rock embedded in it. By placing the ice-bound rock in a large tray of water with sand at the bottom, all he had to do was gently blow on the rock to get it to move across the water.
And as the ice-embedded rock moved, it scraped a trail in the sand at the tray's bottom. Lorenz devised his clever experiment by researching how the buoyancy of ice can cause large rocks, when encased in ice, to move by floating along tidal beaches in the Arctic Sea.