The biggest fake rock I can think of (technically it’s a fake mountain I guess):
If you look closely at the picture I posted you can see that the ball is carried by a jet of water that comes from below, there is a cushion of perhaps 1 mm or less on which the ball floats in a mould. And evidently you can easily move and turn it one way or another but not roll it out of the mould. I moved several tonnes with one hand!
…until the security guard* came and asked what the *#% I was doing. Then I told him to move the stone. He looked funny, then did it, and smiled.
Those balls of solid stone on a water cushion are popular in Germany, from small for indoors up to 5 or 6 feet in diameter in front of public buildings. You don’t have them in the USA?
* Just to be clear: A security guard is not armed or dangerous here.
Henry Doorly Zoo in boring flyover Omaha, Nebraska has one.
https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm8EX9_Kugel_Ball_Henry_Doorly_Zoo_Omaha_Nebraska
You call them Kugel Ball? That’s funny: Kugel is German for ball. A ball ball.
I just call them “cool”.
That link was the first link google found relevant to the specific installion I mentioned. I doubt the contributor of that waymarking.com entry named it authoritatively. I don’t know what the zoo calls it.
Cool, that was good!
My mom used to make a noodle pudding type dish called kugel. There were no balls in it, though.
Too late to edit my prior post, but I note that your own link labels the object in question “kugelbrunnen” so at least one German word for it includes “ball”.
Yes, of course: Brunnen means fountain, so a Kugelbrunnen is a “ball fountain”. Which comes quite close to what it actually is.
Sounds like a Yiddish culinary/linguistic corruption of Knödel or Kloß, which are balls. Can be sweet or salty, mostly yummy.
Yeah, “kugel ball” sounds like a half-assed mistranslation (or non-translation) that accidentally latched onto the wrong part of the original phrase.
I’ve never seen that goofy name in use (like I said, I have never identified the object in question by any particular name), but at least that submitter did. I would not overgeneralize one example to “lol, dumbass Americans call it ‘ball ball’”. Because I am a dumbass American who doesn’t.
I thought it was funny, but I did not mean Americans are dumbasses because of that. I recently learned on this board that the brown bear is called Ursus arcticus which means Bear bear (1st Latin, 2nd Greek). That is funny too, but it does not mean that Linneaus is a dumbass. So I apologize if my comment came across as belittling you or Americans in general.
I wonder though if you did not use the searchphrase “kugel ball” how you managed to find a picture of it.
My search phase was “henry doorly zoo water globe” and I selected the second image match, since it was the first image taken with enough context to be sure it was the installation at that zoo. (The text matches did not address the globe at all.)
So, sorry to disappoint, I did not search for that dumbass phrase. It was serendipity.
Not disappointed at all, I think that was cool!
< / hijack >
Hey, Target has big red balls in front of the store.
I doubt they are naturally occurring. That would be cool if it was, tho’.
This has really pinged Son-of-a-wreks, curiousity. DIL says he stopping at every one he sees and is investigating.
He got run off at Burger King.
And text me: “Remember when I told you of the tiny spheres on the Moon surface?” I didn’t respond.
Then I got “Just you think about that!”
What have I done?
That boy ain’t right.
Not only do we have them in the US, but people spinning them is the point of having them, so nobody would be confused by it.
Here is the one that I’m familiar with:
https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/wm8KPZ_Ripleys_Kugel_Ball_Myrtle_Beach_SC
Ashkenazi noodle kugel doesn’t involve anything shaped like balls. At least, not the way my grandparents made it (or the way I do, for that matter.) Wide noodles, eggs, raisins, a bit of sugar but not very sweet; mix in a casserole dish and bake.
There’s a house a few miles from me that has one of those balls atop a pedestal near the front entrance. The water usually isn’t going, though. When it is, you can see the heavy stone ball rotating from the way the irregular coloration and layering changes.
This is getting curiouser and curiouser.
There’s those Diquis Spheres in Costa Rica.
For whatever it’s worth, wikipedia uses the name Kugel fountain, while noting that they are also called “kugel balls.” No citation is given for the authority of that name.
The list in the article shows a great many of them in the United States.
Never seen it anything but square or rectangular pans.