Ringing Rocks

My wife and I went to Ringing Rocks Park over the weekend. We learned about it a few years ago and have been wanting to go. There's a small trail system there. A 30-ish minute hike takes you to a field of rocks that looks like it spilled down the hill. If you hit the rocks with a hammer, they make a ringing sound!

This was a beautiful late summer weekend in New Jersey, so there were lots of young families with small children clambering over the rocks when we got there. The air was filled with the sound of chiming stones and childlike wonder. We brought our own hammer and spent 20 minutes or so trying out different rocks. It was a lot of fun! Not every rock rang, but many of them did. They sound like metal chimes and the hammer springs off them. We plan to go back in the fall and winter to see if the tone changes as the weather cools.

I think my favorite part of the trip was learning that nobody actually knows why they ring! It's likely due to internal stresses in the rocks, but there isn't consensus on how those stresses developed, why they persist in the ringing rocks, or how they dissipated in the dull ones.

I love that. I'd assumed the mechanism was known. But here we are in 2025 and there are still mundane natural phenomena that we haven't figured out. It's refreshing to find that there's still some mystery in the natural world and it might be waiting to be discovered right down the road. If you live near eastern PA and haven't been, it's worth a trip. If you don't, maybe there's some natural mystery in your area awaiting your visit.