How does a boomerang return to you after you throw it?

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How does a boomerang return to you after you throw it?

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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.

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