I once bought a good boomerang, reach the instructions and followed them. On about the third or fourth throw I stood in amazement as the boomerang soared upward and arced around as it did what a boomerang should do. I didn't really believe that it was happening, I kept my gaze fixed on the flying boomerang right until until a sharp pain to my left-hand side roused me out of my trance like state.
Well spotted! Small error in the Gfx. Each wing of the boomerang is bent at 60-80 degrees from a dead-straight stick, so one tip is actually 100-120 degrees away from the other tip. Eagle eyed Head Squeeze subscribers don't miss a thing!
I don't understand how an obtuse angle can be less than 90 degrees? The angle between the wings of the boomerang is shown to lie between 60-80 degrees. How can this be possible, the angle is obtuse.
Probably "throwing stick" (in Egyptian), which is what most australian aborigines called theirs (in their respective languages). There were boxes full of boomerangs in Tutankhamun's tomb, for example, and there are a few pictures showing them being used to hunt birds.
The figure had both arms on top of each other. If you then rotate it (CW/CCW does not matter at all), it's over 90 degrees. If in the picture the arms were - as you say - in an angle of 180 degrees; then you would be correct.
I believe they used kangaroo tendon for spears because it's easily shaped and can be over 2 meters long, not much use as a bow though. To my mind, the boomerang is the most unlikely weapon to be developed because it's very difficult to make using stone tools, difficult to use if it's not made really well and has limited uses unless you are very highly skilled at every aspect of their design and construction. It's not something that comes about by a string of accidents and then catches on.
I'd like to see that 6 minute flight, seems impossible without some external lift - thermal, or ridge or similar. Even still it'd have to keep that rotation energy going for so long. Mind boggling.
To get such a flight, you need to use a specific type of boomerang, that looks very much an ice hockey stick, is very thin and stiff and is very light. The lift differential between the short and long arms is such that when you throw the boomerang, it immediately gains great height (think 50m or more) and then flattens out so it hovers, much like a sycamore seed or helicopter blades. It simply takes a long time to come down that way.. and often gets a height push from thermals etc before it finally reaches the ground. I've been throwing and making boomerangs for 50+ years, and I held the Australian Maximum Time Aloft (MTA) record for 10+ years...
Well, the thing they neglect to mention in this video is that the boomerang does actually achieve lift. They're designed to be wind foils, curved on top flat on bottom, to create negative pressure generating lift like the wings of a plane. So not only does the spin help it fly, but the air foil effect causes it to fly a surprisingly long time
Wow, May was GROSSLY incorrect, especially with regards to the gyroscopic effect. Gyroscopic effect only provides a bit of STABILITY to help keep the wings aligned. The trajectory of the boomerang (why it comes back) is due to the DIFFERENCE IN LIFT generated by the advancing blade and receding blade. The blade rotating forward has more wind flowing over it, generating more lift, than the blade rotating backward. As the forward speed is reduced by drag, the boomerang will tend to flatten out with repect to the gropund, and make close to a vertical landing. Hunting boomerangs (kylies) have symetrical airfoils that don't generate significant lift, therefore they fly straight, no matter how fast they spin. DUH!
Once me, my brother, and fiew of my friends were playing around with boomerangs, one of my friends Keven (not the real name) threw the boomerang and it went soaring. The boomering the turned around, came back, and hit him in the forhead. He was crying while i was dieing (id bet my bottom dollar that i spelled that wrong) of laughter. After appologiseing, and makeing shure Kevin didnt need medical treatment, we contenued playing with the boomerangs after getting bike healmets.
This is why in Victorian England, while boomerang throwing was something of an alternative pasttime, they would use something like an extra strong butterfly net to catch them...
It is not over 90 degrees, degrees is measured clockwise, meaning that while it is flat, that is considered a 180 degree angle, if you were to raise the left side up a bit that is 5, 10, 15 etc degrees. For it to be over 90 degrees it would have to bend more to the right, not left.
You might as well say that it's illogical anyone would develop bows and arrows since slings work fine. Anyway, they did make some spears and bows, but both of those need long pieces of elastic hardwood, which weren't exactly common in Australia or Egypt (the earliest known boomerangs were made of ivory, BTW). Short bows aren't very accurate, and boomerangs are quite efficient for hunting emus (aim at the neck and you can miss by almost half the boomerang's width and still get a hit).
It's 60-80 degrees from a dead-straight stick (so one tip is 100-120 degrees away from the other tip), not 60-80 degrees bend BETWEEN the tips. So if you got 3 boomerangs with a 60 degree angle (120 from tip to tip) then attached them so one wing of each overlapped with a wing of another, you'd get effectively a 3-blade propeller (which is 120 degrees gap between each blade).
Speaking of wings, I'd love it if you guys did a video on how planes actually fly. It's surprising how many people don't know how (or at least the main reason) a plane flies, and more discouragingly how every text book I've ever read with the subject is basically completely wrong (even modern ones).
These videos are great fun, very informative and have good humour. It's also very, very, very, very good that these are not made by an American network. We'd see the same information with the humour replaced by ominous promises of how these things could kill you, span a whole half hour with everything repeated at least twenty times.
No, as in the angle that the second arm makes from the straight line through the direction of the first. The opposite angle in a semicircle, not a full circle, essentially
This one was awesome but left me craving more details. I can Google them, of course, but this vid could've done to be a bit longer. :) Maybe you under-estimated boomerang love?
Thumbs up for Mr May and all the people at Head Squeeze for pushing me to subscribe! BECAUSE I ALREADY DID WHEN I SAW YOUR FANTASTIC VIDEOS. YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME-ER THAN ANYTHINGZ IN DA W0RDL. Keep at it.
Many inaccuracies in this one. 0:42 - carpathian mountains are about 1600 km northwest from the place where they are drawn. 1:03 - that's not 60-80 degrees. 120-160 is more like it. 1:40 - this image is all wrong. What's turning is not the boomerang (it's turning all the time) but ist rotational axis which is perpendicular to the boomerang as it's drawn there. So the boomerang turns from "/" to "-" and then to "\" ... roughly, seen through eyes of the one who threw it.
They didn't. They developed something curved to hit enemies around shields (combat boomerangs). But they also hunted with them, and that meant sometimes they needed to be thrown (ex., to knock down a bird). Eventually you start to figure out that some designs are more accurate than others (which led to hunting boomerangs, that fly very straight), and some curve in predictable ways (which led to returning boomerangs, that are mainly a toy, and sometimes used to scare animals towards the hunter).
hello james may. I have a question for you. why do people sleepwalk? I've tried to watch other videos on it but I just don't understand. and I like the was that you explain topics on head squeeze. thank u :)
either he meant 1 is +60 80 degrees and the other is -60 80 degrees making the total 120-160 degrees compared to eachother. Or he meant 60-80 degrees off compared to straight so its between 100-120 degrees
Yep, and I think someone should pay attention and throw it couple thousand miles more accurate for this channel to be more reliable... just bustin' your balls;) . Great channel!!!
Carpathian Mountains in Iran (or there abouts) ? Its just a bit nord-east of egypt ... And you put it in Arabian Peninsula :) Where its kinda weird to make that mistake when they drove on them in 2009 when they came to Romania :)
James, the Boomerang that you showed in the video wouldn't come back , they need to have 2 pairs of perpendicular wings joint to form an "X" shape, then it'll come back . Hammond did the same experiment in his engineering connections series.
I don't think scientists have worked out whether we will ever live on Mars yet, but a group at Imperial College found out how to get a human to mars - Martin Archer has done a Sci Guide on it for us : )
Wait, there was no 'Like a boomerang returns to you when you throw it, you can return to Head Squeeze after every new video by simply clicking on the subscribe button'?
The moral of this story is that Link uses Jedi Force to make it come back every time. Everything can be explained with logic and reasoning.. Now how about the triple-winged boomerang??
Yes I can accept that as a theory, I never considered their use as a weapon of that type, kind of makes a bit of sense anyway. Whenever I have seen images of aboriginals etc they always seem to carry the bare minimum of weapons that can double as tools. However I am still a long way from imagining that they would spend much time developing something like a flying boomerang when spears and arrows would easily kill prey from long distances. It just seems illogical to me.
Are you trying to tell me that basketball players worked out the theories of gravity, aerodynamics and semielastic collision necessary to score? Not all boomerangs are meant to come back. Some aren't even meant to be thrown. It's not hard to imagine that they started out as combat boomerangs (basically curved clubs), evolved into hunting boomerangs (which are just thrown and don't return), and then someone noticed that a certain type of curve made them return. Unless, of course, it was aliens.
That's degrees from straight... People do that sometimes if they're referencing something that is assumed straight. Just subtract from 180 if it bothers you.
James i think that you should reread the Encyclopedia Britannica again. I for one think that the Carpathian Mountains are in Europe in the North of the Balkans... But yet again I could be wrong who knows.
Basketball is a much more modern invention and balls do not require very much trial and error to get right. I still find it hard to understand how they could have developed something curved for throwing, have you ever tried throwing a curved stick accurately ? A flat club is near impossible throw with any force and is certainly not ideal as a weapon. I think there is too much speculation in the history of boomerangs, I am very curious to find out how they were developed by ancient people..
![ร้อยพ่อพันแม่ - WanMai [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XY2pNYASEbg/mqdefault.jpg)
Please note that the Carpathian mountains stretch from the Czech Republic to Romania. They are not in Iraq (or Syria)
czech republic?... really
And some Ukraine too
And poland
@@Hawaiipaul Yes, learn some geography en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Carpathians
Yes, exactly my thoughts, isnt this supsoed to be a profesional production?
Yep I think our boomerang took the lazy option and didn't venture far enough for the actual Carpathian Mountains... Back to Geography class for us!
Nice video there!
(if you don't count the Carpathians been a bit out on the map...)
I once bought a good boomerang, reach the instructions and followed them. On about the third or fourth throw I stood in amazement as the boomerang soared upward and arced around as it did what a boomerang should do. I didn't really believe that it was happening, I kept my gaze fixed on the flying boomerang right until until a sharp pain to my left-hand side roused me out of my trance like state.
😄 It hit you?
Well spotted! Small error in the Gfx. Each wing of the boomerang is bent at 60-80 degrees from a dead-straight stick, so one tip is actually 100-120 degrees away from the other tip. Eagle eyed Head Squeeze subscribers don't miss a thing!
What an awesome humble response…nice to see that!
the carpathian mountains are in eastern europe not in iraq/iran
the carpathian mountains in iraq??
No in Romania
I don't understand how an obtuse angle can be less than 90 degrees? The angle between the wings of the boomerang is shown to lie between 60-80 degrees. How can this be possible, the angle is obtuse.
yeah, I thought the same thing
+Rohit Kumar
It should be 180 - (60-80) I guess.
yeah.. this makes sense
but isn’t an obtuse angle more than 90? ._.
So glad it's an Aussie narrator. Must be authentic.
Probably "throwing stick" (in Egyptian), which is what most australian aborigines called theirs (in their respective languages). There were boxes full of boomerangs in Tutankhamun's tomb, for example, and there are a few pictures showing them being used to hunt birds.
1:04 60°-80°? Impossible! An angle like this must have more than 90°! I suppose, you mean 100°-120°, didn't you?
It's never a waste. The impossible becomes possible becomes probable becomes likely becomes reality.
I love how he's wearing a shirt with his face on it
At last someone explains boomerangs as a propeller!!
So you mean... it's not because it loves me?!?
*sob*
James May = Most underrated host on Top Gear
Almost a half kilometer is pretty cool. I assume that if it hits anything, its return trajectory is changed with a loss in velocity.
The figure had both arms on top of each other. If you then rotate it (CW/CCW does not matter at all), it's over 90 degrees. If in the picture the arms were - as you say - in an angle of 180 degrees; then you would be correct.
I believe they used kangaroo tendon for spears because it's easily shaped and can be over 2 meters long, not much use as a bow though.
To my mind, the boomerang is the most unlikely weapon to be developed because it's very difficult to make using stone tools, difficult to use if it's not made really well and has limited uses unless you are very highly skilled at every aspect of their design and construction. It's not something that comes about by a string of accidents and then catches on.
I'd like to see that 6 minute flight, seems impossible without some external lift - thermal, or ridge or similar. Even still it'd have to keep that rotation energy going for so long. Mind boggling.
To get such a flight, you need to use a specific type of boomerang, that looks very much an ice hockey stick, is very thin and stiff and is very light. The lift differential between the short and long arms is such that when you throw the boomerang, it immediately gains great height (think 50m or more) and then flattens out so it hovers, much like a sycamore seed or helicopter blades. It simply takes a long time to come down that way.. and often gets a height push from thermals etc before it finally reaches the ground. I've been throwing and making boomerangs for 50+ years, and I held the Australian Maximum Time Aloft (MTA) record for 10+ years...
Well, the thing they neglect to mention in this video is that the boomerang does actually achieve lift. They're designed to be wind foils, curved on top flat on bottom, to create negative pressure generating lift like the wings of a plane. So not only does the spin help it fly, but the air foil effect causes it to fly a surprisingly long time
Wow, May was GROSSLY incorrect, especially with regards to the gyroscopic effect. Gyroscopic effect only provides a bit of STABILITY to help keep the wings aligned. The trajectory of the boomerang (why it comes back) is due to the DIFFERENCE IN LIFT generated by the advancing blade and receding blade. The blade rotating forward has more wind flowing over it, generating more lift, than the blade rotating backward. As the forward speed is reduced by drag, the boomerang will tend to flatten out with repect to the gropund, and make close to a vertical landing. Hunting boomerangs (kylies) have symetrical airfoils that don't generate significant lift, therefore they fly straight, no matter how fast they spin. DUH!
I like this video. It’s short and straight to the point
They were found as far as Egypt!? That was a hell of a throw!
Once me, my brother, and fiew of my friends were playing around with boomerangs, one of my friends Keven (not the real name) threw the boomerang and it went soaring. The boomering the turned around, came back, and hit him in the forhead. He was crying while i was dieing (id bet my bottom dollar that i spelled that wrong) of laughter. After appologiseing, and makeing shure Kevin didnt need medical treatment, we contenued playing with the boomerangs after getting bike healmets.
Sorry mate, but clearly the boomerang hit your head and now you've got brain damage. Learn to write.
Max Brockie XDDDD
Max Brockie Im dead xDDDD
This is why in Victorian England, while boomerang throwing was something of an alternative pasttime, they would use something like an extra strong butterfly net to catch them...
It is not over 90 degrees, degrees is measured clockwise, meaning that while it is flat, that is considered a 180 degree angle, if you were to raise the left side up a bit that is 5, 10, 15 etc degrees. For it to be over 90 degrees it would have to bend more to the right, not left.
You might as well say that it's illogical anyone would develop bows and arrows since slings work fine.
Anyway, they did make some spears and bows, but both of those need long pieces of elastic hardwood, which weren't exactly common in Australia or Egypt (the earliest known boomerangs were made of ivory, BTW).
Short bows aren't very accurate, and boomerangs are quite efficient for hunting emus (aim at the neck and you can miss by almost half the boomerang's width and still get a hit).
Next part add an actual throw. Allowing us to view the proper hand position with launch angle :)
James May....Love this chap
It's 60-80 degrees from a dead-straight stick (so one tip is 100-120 degrees away from the other tip), not 60-80 degrees bend BETWEEN the tips.
So if you got 3 boomerangs with a 60 degree angle (120 from tip to tip) then attached them so one wing of each overlapped with a wing of another, you'd get effectively a 3-blade propeller (which is 120 degrees gap between each blade).
Speaking of wings, I'd love it if you guys did a video on how planes actually fly. It's surprising how many people don't know how (or at least the main reason) a plane flies, and more discouragingly how every text book I've ever read with the subject is basically completely wrong (even modern ones).
reNINTENDO how are the textbooks you have read wrong?
Bernoulli's principle is NOT the key factor, as any kid who's flown a paper or balsa glider can tell you.
I love how they don't beg for subscribers all the time anymore
These videos are great fun, very informative and have good humour. It's also very, very, very, very good that these are not made by an American network. We'd see the same information with the humour replaced by ominous promises of how these things could kill you, span a whole half hour with everything repeated at least twenty times.
No, as in the angle that the second arm makes from the straight line through the direction of the first.
The opposite angle in a semicircle, not a full circle, essentially
This one was awesome but left me craving more details. I can Google them, of course, but this vid could've done to be a bit longer. :) Maybe you under-estimated boomerang love?
Thumbs up for Mr May and all the people at Head Squeeze for pushing me to subscribe!
BECAUSE I ALREADY DID WHEN I SAW YOUR FANTASTIC VIDEOS.
YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME-ER THAN ANYTHINGZ IN DA W0RDL.
Keep at it.
Many inaccuracies in this one.
0:42 - carpathian mountains are about 1600 km northwest from the place where they are drawn.
1:03 - that's not 60-80 degrees. 120-160 is more like it.
1:40 - this image is all wrong. What's turning is not the boomerang (it's turning all the time) but ist rotational axis which is perpendicular to the boomerang as it's drawn there. So the boomerang turns from "/" to "-" and then to "\" ... roughly, seen through eyes of the one who threw it.
James I have a question. Why do some wounds leave scars while others heal perfectly fine?
They didn't. They developed something curved to hit enemies around shields (combat boomerangs). But they also hunted with them, and that meant sometimes they needed to be thrown (ex., to knock down a bird). Eventually you start to figure out that some designs are more accurate than others (which led to hunting boomerangs, that fly very straight), and some curve in predictable ways (which led to returning boomerangs, that are mainly a toy, and sometimes used to scare animals towards the hunter).
James never said the Carpathian mountains were in Turkey, The graphics in the background did.
Thanx4post
Tysm
hello james may. I have a question for you. why do people sleepwalk? I've tried to watch other videos on it but I just don't understand. and I like the was that you explain topics on head squeeze. thank u :)
finally someone with sense
this is brilliant! more video may!..
As an Australian, I can tenn you right now that that kind of boomerang was never intended to return and will never return.
6 minute flight eh? Pretty sure dropping it out of an airplane doesn't count
I was hoping for a demonstration of someone throwing a boomerang and it coming back.
How did you improve you voice quality..!
Hello James. What was that pen in your video? My friend says it's a Mont Blanc. Thanx
Because they love you
either he meant 1 is +60 80 degrees and the other is -60 80 degrees making the total 120-160 degrees compared to eachother.
Or he meant 60-80 degrees off compared to straight so its between 100-120 degrees
You got the Carpathian mountains location wrong on the map.
Carpathian mountains are in north-east of Europe, somewhere around Ukraine, not in the middle east
Where did boomerang use first and what for it's been used?
The first James May video where he actually doesn't tell you to subscribe
Possibly misrepresenting which angle? They mean the outside angle, lay a stick flat and then bend one end up by 60-80 degrees?
Yep, and I think someone should pay attention and throw it couple thousand miles more accurate for this channel to be more reliable... just bustin' your balls;) . Great channel!!!
Carpathian Mountains in Iran (or there abouts) ? Its just a bit nord-east of egypt ... And you put it in Arabian Peninsula :) Where its kinda weird to make that mistake when they drove on them in 2009 when they came to Romania :)
Never heard of Ivory boomerangs in Egypt, I'll have to look that up, I wonder what the Egyptians called them ?
Video question: How long would the runway in the Fast and the Furious 6, theoretically have been?
My father bought me one for Christmas a long time ago. Black eye 3 hours later.
Over six minutes? that's some warlock stuff right there
Here a question:does revising really works
James, the Boomerang that you showed in the video wouldn't come back , they need to have 2 pairs of perpendicular wings joint to form an "X" shape, then it'll come back . Hammond did the same experiment in his engineering connections series.
The boomerang comes from Tamizh Nadu, India, they call this as "valari".
I watched this whole episode in 0.5 speed, needless to say, I shan't be doing it again.
Fancy Pen 1:50 Montblanc perhaps ?
I don't think scientists have worked out whether we will ever live on Mars yet, but a group at Imperial College found out how to get a human to mars - Martin Archer has done a Sci Guide on it for us : )
The Carpathian mountains and in Central and Eastern Europe, not in Turkey.
The world distance record is 238m by Manuel Schütz
I stand corrected. I really should have checked a map beforehand, but you only have so much of a lunch break at work :P
I was nearly assaulted by a returning boomerang.
I randomly googled James May, everyone else do it, it's hilarious
Wait, there was no 'Like a boomerang returns to you when you throw it, you can return to Head Squeeze after every new video by simply clicking on the subscribe button'?
wrong location of the Carpathian mountains Mr. May :)
The moral of this story is that Link uses Jedi Force to make it come back every time.
Everything can be explained with logic and reasoning.. Now how about the triple-winged boomerang??
I did not know James was so smart ?!
Carpathian mountains are in central-eastern Europe, not in the middle east!
Yes I can accept that as a theory, I never considered their use as a weapon of that type, kind of makes a bit of sense anyway. Whenever I have seen images of aboriginals etc they always seem to carry the bare minimum of weapons that can double as tools.
However I am still a long way from imagining that they would spend much time developing something like a flying boomerang when spears and arrows would easily kill prey from long distances. It just seems illogical to me.
Yep... That did it for me...
and i still have no idea why a boomerang comes back.
Are you trying to tell me that basketball players worked out the theories of gravity, aerodynamics and semielastic collision necessary to score?
Not all boomerangs are meant to come back. Some aren't even meant to be thrown. It's not hard to imagine that they started out as combat boomerangs (basically curved clubs), evolved into hunting boomerangs (which are just thrown and don't return), and then someone noticed that a certain type of curve made them return.
Unless, of course, it was aliens.
60-80 degrees from the centre-line. So the diagram is wrong. 60-80 from centre-line is also like saying 120-160 total.
Can you please explain Schrodinger's cat ?
from the other side 120 to 140 degrees for your side
That's degrees from straight... People do that sometimes if they're referencing something that is assumed straight. Just subtract from 180 if it bothers you.
James i think that you should reread the Encyclopedia Britannica again. I for one think that the Carpathian Mountains are in Europe in the North of the Balkans... But yet again I could be wrong who knows.
How does bike gears work ?
They got 200,000 subs now
You didn't have a boomerang. You had a stick.
No, he would say "on that bomb shell it is time to end thank you for watching" and then end the video. lol :)
The Carpathian Mountains are not that south in the middle east, those are Zagros Mountains at best where the video is pointing...
Is there a video of this world record throwing boomerang?
One more fact, and a hello to Head Squeeze!
Basketball is a much more modern invention and balls do not require very much trial and error to get right. I still find it hard to understand how they could have developed something curved for throwing, have you ever tried throwing a curved stick accurately ? A flat club is near impossible throw with any force and is certainly not ideal as a weapon. I think there is too much speculation in the history of boomerangs, I am very curious to find out how they were developed by ancient people..
I think he means if there was an imaginary straight line underneath it then the angle would be 60-80 degrees from that axis.
0:43 those are not the carpathian mountains
They fly in a triangular shape and changer direction twice to return.
Hi, James
... perhaps the Aussie team would have shown a boomerang used for hunting ...