Returning Boomerang

SCIENCE CONCEPT:

The aborigines (Native to Australia) are people who live in the down under of Australia. They arrived in the country about 40,000 years ago and lived as hunters and gatherers. The aborigines did not use guns or bows and arrows to hunt. Instead, they used a curved piece of wood called a boomerang to kill or knock down animals.

STUDENT OBJECTIVE:

The student will make a homemade boomerang that won't hurt anything, but it will come back to them when they throw it through the air.

OVERVIEW:

In this activity, the student will make a boomerang out of two Styrofoam trays with curved ends. After making the boomerang the student will go outside and throw their boomerang through the air and watch it return to them.

PREPARATION TIME:

20 minutes.

LESSON TIME:

30 minutes.

TEACHER PREP:

Gather materials to make the returning boomerang.

WORDS TO KNOW:

lift

drag

streamlined

friction

TEACHER TEXT:

The weight of the object desiring to fly, determines how much lift is necessary. Contributing to this, is whether the object is going up, down, or in level flight. When going up, lift must be greater than weight. In level flight, lift must equal weight, and going down lift is less than weight. Minimum speed for lift is dependent upon the design of the flying object.

Since the air pressure under the wing of the boomerang is greater than on top, it tends to lift the wing. This upward push of the air is called lift. This is what holds up the boomerang.

Drag is the second aerodynamic force. It resists the forward motion of any object. The shape of the object determines the amount of drag produced. Objects that are streamlined produce the least amount of drag.

There are four kinds of drag. First is friction drag. It occurs next to the surface of an object. The second type of drag is form drag. Air flowing past an object breaks away from the surface to form little swirling pockets of air called eddies. These take energy from the object and slow it down. It occurs with non-streamlined objects. The third kind, induced drag, affects only planes. The fourth kind occurs only when airplanes fly faster than the speed of sound.

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Last modified: Sat Dec 20 15:09:00 PST 1997