How does a boomerang return to you after you throw it?
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It depends on the boomerang as there are different types. The returning boomerang does so because it’s a wing. When it’s thrown this generates lift. This causes it to return if it’s thrown on its side because the lift will be sideways.
A returning boomerang is made like a 2 or 3 wing propeller with uneven wings. When you throw it spinning it creates lift at almost a right angle to its surface (because the wings are uneven).
So if you throw it level to the ground it will just go upwards while it flies away from you until it slows down so much that the gravity is stronger then the lift and then it falls down.
If you throw it at an angle to the ground it will try to fly in a curve or a spiral. So you practice changing the angle until you learn how to make the path to go towards you.
You can also change how strong rotation you will give it while throwing so you can time the moment it goes near you with the moment it starts to fall down, if done right the boomerang can be made to almost stop right in front of you.
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You throw the boomerang so its path is curved. If it follows the curve around long enough it will form a circle, so you throw it curved a really long way and it comes back to you.
The returning boomerangs were practice/showcase ones. If you use a boomerang for hunting to stun something, it won’t return after it hits your quarry
My follow up question would be, how in the heck is a boomerang useful as a weapon, assuming it has to hit a target?
It can’t possible return to sender if it’s stopped in it’s tracks when it slams into someone head right?
Like, when you let an arrow fly, you naturally understand it can’t come back. Hopefully you hit your target.
A boomerang though, you’re expected to retrieve it somehow, so how does that factor in as a weapon unless you carry a multitude of them?
Have you ever seen those little seeds that fall from trees that look like a propellor falling down? It spins, but it also falls down in a circular shape.
Now imagine you make it 10 times bigger/heavier, and throw it sideways. It does the exact same thing but in a wider circle.
You know how planes can fly but also turn in the sky? Well if the pilot kept turning left it would eventually return to where it started.
Same idea, a spinning boomerang creates life like a wing but points slightly to the right/left, so it arcs back to the starting point
A boomerang has two or more airfoil lifting surfaces. When you throw it, you spin it. That means the wing going forward generates a bit more lift than the wing going backwards because the air is flowing over the wing just a little bit faster. Because a boomerang is spinning, it behaves like a gyroscope. Gyroscopes are weird counterintuitive things. If you apply a turning force, a torque, to a gyroscope, where the axis of torque is at right angles to the axis the gyroscope is spinning, the result is the gyroscope axis shifts towards an axis that is at right angles to both the initial spinning axis and the axis of the applied torque. The torque generated by the differential lift causes the boomerang to therefore curve in flight and eventually come back to where you start. [This guy](http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh1/boomerangs.htm) has all the info you ever want to know about how boomerangs work.
What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?
Wasn’t the boomerang originally a throwing weapon to hunt small game? What would be the advantage of it coming back to you if you were trying to hit an animal with it? If you miss the animal it is just going to hit the ground. Or was it always just a cool toy?
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