Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1898 — The Boomerang's Curious Flight. [ARTICLE]

The Boomerang's Curious Flight.

Some German scientists, seeking to discover the secret of the boomerang’s curious flight, caused a party of Australian natives to give an exhibition of boomerang throwing at Munster. The instruments used were of two sizes, the larger being a slender crescent about two feet long, two and a quarter inches wide, and a quarter of an inch thick, made of an extraordinarily heavy Australian ironwood. This boomerang was jerked up into the air about one hundred yards, when it flew straight away, then turned to the left and returned in a curved line back to the thrower, whirling around constantly and whizzing unpleasantly. One badly direotfcd projectile fell through a spectator’s hat with a cut as clean as that of a razor. A Weimar manufacturer, who has made some eleven thousand toy boomerangs, believes that the mystery of shape lies in the sharper curvature in the middle, with unequal length of the two arms, which must be made of equal weight by unequal thickness. The peculiarity of motion is due to the difference in the length of the arms, which diverges the curve of rotation from the circular. It is also supposed that the variation of friction from the air affects the result.