J U N E 2 0 0 7 I S S U E The Big Question
|
|
Ralph Lorenz, a scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics
Laboratory who works in planetary exploration, is
author of Spinning Flight: Dynamics of Frisbees,
Boomerangs, Samaras, and Skipping Stones (Springer,
2006). Photo by Mike Ciesielski |
Q:
What's the Best Way to Throw a Frisbee? "I used to play Ultimate Frisbee, but I wasn't really thinking about it scientifically at the time. I got into instrumenting Frisbees from the perspective of instrumenting other things. I was making little instrument packages suspended by parachutes with a view to understanding how we might interpret such measurements on space probes, in particular the Huygens probe that went to Titan, Saturn's moon. Having built these little instruments, I had the idea, Oh, I could try doing that on a Frisbee. That'd be sort of fun. And indeed, it was fun. That got me into looking into the scientific literature, such as it was, being published on Frisbee dynamics, and I found that there's been very little work done on it. Then I branched out and looked at boomerangs and skipping stones, and I realized there's a unifying theme of spinning objects flying through the air — that interaction of gyrodynamics and aerodynamics that everyone knows about but is never really written down. It was just kind of neat." — Catherine Pierre |
The Johns Hopkins Magazine |
901 S. Bond St. | Suite 540 |
Baltimore, MD 21231 Phone 443-287-9900 | Fax 443-287-9898 | E-mail jhmagazine@jhu.edu |