It seems the record for javelin is roughly 100m. One immediate question for me is, would a lighter (or possibly heavier) javelin increase records? Surely there is a trade-off due to air resistance (a 10g javelin won’t make it 100m). Are there other throwing competitions with stones/balls which result in longer distances? I am also wondering what shape would be ideal to maximise distance maybe a sphere, a raindrop shape, or something like the javelin?
To be clear I am talking about humans muscles (no aids) being used to throw.
In: Biology
The javelin as in modern track and field events is artificially limited in length they can fly. Improvment in design from the 1950 so the 1980 resulted in long throwing distances but they did fly flat. The result is that points often do not hit the ground and stuck but bounce and slide along the ground. This is quite problematic when you throw them on a field with a running track around it.
There was a change in the design requirement so they are more nose heavy so they landed and stuck to the ground, it alos reduced the length they were thrown, you want to limit them to the field you have available at stadiums.
The result is the then-world record 104.80 m by Uwe Hohn was reset in 1986. The season-best dropped by 11 meters between 1985 and 1986
So javelins could been thrown longer if the was designed to do that and not designed to follow the limitations that are set to make them stick to the ground and not to fly to long. It likely is le to for example add som lifting surface (wings) to a javelin and make it fly longer.
The boomerang record is as others mention over 400 meters and the key to it is the boomerang generates lift, you could improve a javelin that way too
The answer that cheats a bit is that anything you can throw can travel an enormous distance if you choose the location correctly. Do a space walk around ISS in earth orbit and throw coming and it will orbit the earth for quite a long time before the orbit decays. Even if you remove the distance traveled from the initial speed ISS had it will still be extremely long. If you throw a object at 1m/s then it travels 86.4 km in 24 hours, which is discarded from ISS as that say in orbit for months. The shape does matter because there is some air resistance a javelin it likely quite a good shapee.
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