🚀 go-pugleaf

vkochend@nyx.cs.du.edu (vance kochenderfer) writes:

> Of course, the boomerang will not develop any lift from the frictionless
> air and will simply travel in a straight line as it falls to the ground.

This is just intuition speaking.

The gross aerodynamic properties of a boomerang are such that it will return 
to the point from which it was launched with (about) the same speed with which
it was thrown.  Tossing one off a moving train is exactly the same as ground
launching it with a howitzer.  That means that some guy back in the dining car
is going to be pelted by a boomerang.

Friction has very little to do with lift.  The only purpose friction serves is
to make an engineer ruin a perfectly good airplane by putting an engine on it.
:o)#

			-T
				T Velazquez
				MIT Aero/Astro
				brndlfly@athena.mit.edu
"Crayolas are one of the few things the human race has in common."
				-Robert Fulghum