December 16, 2014 • 29 mins
The physics behind returning boomerangs literally may be the most difficult concept to understand in the entire body of science. Join Josh and Chuck as they try their absolute best to describe how boomerangs work - and maybe even pull it off!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Noel Is
with us today. Yes, producing, Yeah, which makes it a
super special stuff you should know, a more here stute
(00:22):
stuff you should know. Yeah, that's right. Although old to
get a haircut, I know. He looks like a buddy
of mine from elementary school. Your elementary school for a
net a full beard. No, without he took away the
beard would be like any number of my friends from
elementary school. Yeah. There was always that one guy though
that had the early early facial hair. My you know,
(00:42):
jimsa Middle Eastern. He sort of had a little mustache
in like the seventh grade. I had a friend named
ron in Uh in elementary school. Man. He had like
a deep voice and like the mustache and everything. It
may have been fourth or fifth grade. Now he sells
steer is. Yeah, so obviously we're talking boomerangs, Chuck, that's right,
(01:06):
And um, if you associate boomerangs with Australia, there's actually
a pretty good reason for that. It turns out the boomerangs,
what do you think of a boomerang, which is kind
of like a crescent shaped stick that you throw and
it just comes back to you eventually and you catch
it and look at your friends and say pretty cool.
Huh yeah there, Like how do you do that? That
(01:28):
was most people think perfected in um by aborigines in Australia.
That's right. If you want to go back even further, UM, well,
there's a couple of types of boomerangs. Well, there's many
types of boomerangs, but two main categories is one that
returns to you that you play with, and the one
that you go out and try and kill animals with
(01:48):
that does not return to you. UM. I call those
the sad boomerangs. Some people call him rabbit sticks rabbit
Oh no, I know, isn't that mean? But if you
want to learn how to make one yourself, go to
um Survival Skills, the website the Hunting Boomerang. It's actually
it's pretty cool. This guy does. He makes he's he
shows you step by step how to make a boomerang
(02:12):
natural skills, I'm sorry skill. He just goes out in
the woods and finds like a kind of roughly boomerang
shape stick and then use it into like a functioning,
non returning boomerang is pretty awesome. Well, and that's what
people theorize is how the boomerang came about. Um Back
in Took Took's day, they would eventually learn to take
(02:34):
a club and beat an animal on the head. And
then maybe one of Took Took's rand was smart enough
to say, Hey, maybe if I throw this at the
animal from a distance, I won't scare them away, or
that animals faster than I can run, But I can
throw a stick faster than the animal can run. Let
me hit it in the head with the stick. That's right.
And so over time, just like with any early tool
(02:57):
um evolution, I guess you would uh find sticks that
flew better and further and further, and eventually they sort
of took the shape of a boomerang because of its
unique flying properties. Yeah, they figured out that like a
curved stick, well, you can aim it more easily and
it'll fly longer. So they started selecting for those kind
(03:18):
of sticks, and then they started making those sticks themselves,
like somebody from the Natural Skills website would. Yeah, the
two the the design of the two different branches made
it more stable. Yeah, and we'll get into the mind
bending physics behind a boomerang. Boomerangs, frankly, are magic sticks
of physics. They're almost they're almost it's almost impossible to
(03:43):
understand them, like what's going on? But we're gonna do
our best to explain it. And it's with a non
returning boomerang. It's kind of straightforward. It's the returning boomerang
that they say the Aboriginal Australians were the first to invent.
That is really difficult to grasp the physics behind. Yeah,
and the oldest non returning boomerang they found in Poland
(04:05):
from about twenty years ago. Yeah, that's surprising to me.
And what that was that far ago? Know that it
was in Poland? Oh, because I think of the boomerangs
exclusively associated with Oceania. Yeah not, Yeah, they were. They
were found in Native American tribes too, and stuff kind
of all over the world. So Australian Aborigines use something
(04:25):
called a kylie um exclusively for hunting at first, and
they think, and this is I think the netst thing,
because you certainly can't, you know, like find this out factually,
but they think that eventually they stumbled upon one that
kind of came back and they thought it was fun,
so they started throwing returning boomerangs. Yeah, because it's like
(04:47):
just to get their kicks, just for kicks. Because returning
boomerang you can't use for hunting well now, because if
you if you throw returning boomerang, can hit an animal.
If you hit the animal, it's not going to return
back to you. That's that, it's not real. That same
just cartoons everybody. So that's why there's two types. There's
ones that you brain an animal with and there's another
(05:07):
that you just throw around to impress your friends. That's right.
And apparently though the Aboriginal Australians figured out how to
use returning boomerangs to hunt. They would put some nets
up in trees. They would throw the boomerang, the returning boomerang,
and then whoever was best at making like an eagle
or hawks call would make that call and it'd scare
(05:30):
all the birds because they'd see this thing flying here
a hawks call, and they fly into the nets and
the Aborigines would eat them. Not a bad idea. So
that's pretty much the history of boomerangs. Yeah, and they
you know, no one owns a patent on the boomerang.
There are many kinds of boomerangs that people have patented,
of course, but the original boomerang was just hey, this
was something we figured out on our own. It's like DNA,
(05:54):
it belongs to the ages, it belongs to the universe.
So you're returning boomerang is going to be a little
lighter obviously, because you're not trying to kill a rabbit.
It's just for showing off. Yeah, and I've even you know,
they have the little uh um nerf versions for kids.
I had one of those when I was a kid,
the little uh three pronged boomerang, and those are kind
(06:15):
of fun. But if you look at videos of the
real deal, like large three foot wooden boomerangs, it's pretty
impressive to see. Like, you know, it's it's a tough
thing to do. You're not just going out there in
your first try and have to fly back to you.
There's actually like boomerang teams around the world. Yeah, us
boomerang team. Unless you're a wonder kin of course or natural,
I'm sure to do it you on your first time.
(06:37):
I'm sure it's happened before. Maybe this maybe want to
get a boomerang, By the way, did are you going to?
I don't know, maybe the boomerang team. What I'm hoping
is a fan makes handcrafted boomerangs and since oh yeah,
I hadn't thought about that, I'll bet we have at
least one boomerang maker listener, So send us to Yeah nice,
thanks Chuck. That way we can go out and perform
(06:59):
a little two man boomerang. Maybe we can cross them
and everything. So um the Again, the non returning boomerangs
are pretty straightforward. It's the returning boomerangs that are lighter,
and they're they're made to be more aerodynamic. And the
proper way to throw a returning boomerang is um to
(07:20):
hold it at a vertical angle, to hold it up
and down right, which is weird because if you ever
see somebody throw a boomerang, when it comes back, it's horizontal.
It's horizontally oriented. Yeah, it kind of just lands very
softly like a helicopter. Right. The thing is is, it
goes from upright to horizontal in the midst of this
(07:41):
path and it comes back to you. And if you
stop and think about it like that makes zero sense whatsoever.
A non returning boomerang certainly doesn't do either. Of those things.
It's just the returning boomerang. And the whole reason behind
this is because of the design of the returning boomerang.
(08:02):
It's basically a two pronged propeller that's not attached to
anything that thanks to the force you give it and
it's rotation and a whole other bunch of stuff that
will get into it leans to the it falls to
the left, turns clockwise, and comes back to you. That's
(08:23):
if you're a right handed thrower with the right handed boomerang.
If you're a left handed person, you have to have
a left handed boomerang. It's a mirror image of the
right handed boomerang. If you try to throw a right
handed boomerang with your left hand, it's not gonna work out.
So well, I bet there's one person out there it's like, oh,
I had no idea. So we're gonna muster up our
(08:44):
courage and and get into the physics of the boomerang
right after this. Alright, chuck, here we go. All right, So,
I guess the first thing we should talk about is
a little bit about just the physical design of the
boomerang itself. The wings are slightly tilted, so it creates
(09:05):
what's called an airfoil, just like an airplane wing. Look
out your plane window there and you're sitting on the wing.
You're going to notice that the top of it is
rounded and the bottom of it is flat, and that
is going to give a plane lift and a boomerang lift. Right.
The the air going over the top of the wing,
because it's curved in like a tear drop shape. Um,
(09:27):
it picks up speed right, so the air speed is increased,
which means the air pressure is also increased. Well beneath
the wing it's flat, the air is just going through
like it's whatever, but the air pressure is higher, so
you have lower air pressure at the top, higher pressure
at the bottom. That means that you have left that
believe that it's Bernoulli's principle, is it? I think? So?
(09:50):
Show off? No, not really so. So that's that's the
whole thing behind both airplane wings, like you said, and
boomerang wings. Because again, if you if you really kind
of want to start to understand boomerangs, um, first of all,
do more research than just listening to this podcast. But secondly,
you have to think of the boomerang is basically two
(10:11):
airplane wings facing the opposite direction connected together. Okay, that's right,
and that forms essentially a propeller. Yeah, and uh, a
propeller is um. Well, it's it's basically, if you think
about a boomerang, it has an axis, just like a
propeller does, but the axis isn't there. That makes sense,
(10:32):
it's invisible. The propeller is connected to something because it
has to lift the helicopter propeller cause that's the lift
the helicopter, or if it's on the front of a plane,
it's gonna pull that plane forward and up. Um, which
is sort of a key we'll get to in a second. Um.
But it's the same principle. But a boomerang just has
an invisible access let's say. Okay, so it does, and
(10:53):
it's very important because at that axis, which you can
just imagine is in the center of the boomerang where
the two wings come together, that's the access of rotation
that the boomerang has. It's spin. Yeah, and this article
does a good job of pointing out that. You would think,
then if you just turned it completely horizontally like a frisbee,
it would act like a helicopter propeller and just go up, yes,
(11:16):
straight up, or if you turned it completely vertically, which
is how you're supposed to throw it, it would just
go side to side. But it doesn't do either one
of those things. No, and it doesn't. And the reason
why is because if you turn on an air airplane
propeller or a helicopter propeller rotor, it's it starts from
(11:36):
a stationary position and just starts spinning, exactly the the
boomerang doesn't start from a stationary position. It starts spinning
along that central axis. And it's also thrown. Yeah, it's
got that forward momentum already exactly. So it has now
because you threw this thing. You threw it and it
started spinning around its own axis. But you also gave
(11:58):
it that forward momentum, which is linear momentum, which means
that it's now spinning around two axes. That's right, Okay,
this is is this gyroscopic procession. We're close, we're almost there,
and we get there chucked because of these two axes.
So consider this. So the thing is just spinning around.
You've just thrown in. Its upright at a vertical it's
(12:20):
vertically oriented to the earth, and you throw it, and
when you throw it say it has a spin around
that imaginary axis in the middle of the boomerang or
at that point at like twenty kilometers an hour. Okay,
because in Australia koter exactly well. Plus also I read
a Japanese paper on this. That's what they use and
(12:42):
it makes sense. Um, And but you threw it that
that that energy your arm transferred to it when you
threw the frisbee to which gave it its linear momentum.
Say that's making it move through space at a hundred
kilometers per hour. Okay, that's right. So as the things spinning,
whatever blade is at the top of the of the
(13:05):
spin is going in the direction that you threw it, right,
and you threw it at a hundred miles an hour,
and it's spinning at twenty kilometers an hour. That means
that that top blade is spinning at a hundred and
twenty kilometers an hour. You said miles. But yeah, we
get it, Okay. I'm like, I'm just just barely hanging
(13:26):
on here. The bottom one, though, is going in the
opposite direction, so you're it's actually moving at twenty or
eighty kilometers per hour. So the top is a hundred
and twenty. The bottom one is working in the opposite direction,
so it's going eighty kilometers per hour. But these things
are attached to the same thing, so this difference actually
(13:49):
creates a difference in air pressure to its vertical orientation,
which creates torque, which tilts it. Now we've entered gyros
copic procession. Yeah, and I think I precession. I think
I sort of said it like procession, but it's within
e Yeah, it's like what gives Earth seasons. Yeah, that wobble.
(14:09):
The spin is another part of a very important part
because when you throw it, and we'll get into exactly
how to throw it here in a bit, but you
want to give it a good wrist snap to give
it as much spin as possible. Uh. And the spin
is gonna be determined basically the rate of spin by
a few things. The length to the wings, um, you know,
if they're these huge wings, it's the spin isn't going
(14:29):
to be as great, Uh, the angle that they're joined,
and the amount of force applied by you the thrower.
And just like a gyroscope, which if we really wanted
to torture ourselves, we should do one on gyroscopes. Man,
that would be melt. My brain would melt. Yeah, I
just my brain didn't process that stuff well. But um,
like a gyroscope, it's gonna have more stability the faster
(14:50):
it spin. So that's why you want that good risk snap. Yeah.
And the reason why it has more stabilities because so
that torque, that pressure that that's being created by that
difference in air pressure. Um, that forces being pushed down
is actually stabilized throughout the spin of the boomerang. Right. Yeah.
Like if you're going super fast on a bicycle and
(15:12):
you take your hands off the handlebars, you're gonna keep
going straight. If you're going like super slow, you're gonna
start wobbling around, right exactly. Um. The thing is is
that pressure, that force of torque is constant, so it
eventually because I think procession is if you're throwing with
your right hand, procession always comes on in a counterclockwise motion.
(15:35):
The torque turns, It turns the boomerang to the sides,
which is why it eventually comes back around to you horizontally.
That's what lays it down, and it also brings it
in an arc that forms a circular path that comes
back to you. It's all gyroscopic precession. And it's because
the boomerang, this little simple stick that's basically one crescent
(15:59):
shaped piece of wood, turns into a gyroscope that that
turns on three axis all at once. Yeah, all on
one throw. And so it goes from straight it goes
from stationary being straight up and down to spinning and
curving around an arc back to you at a hundred
kilometers an hour, all because you tossed it correctly. Yeah.
(16:22):
And the the design, I mean, there are many, many
different designs of boomerangs. Um, Like I said, they can
have two wings, three four, you can look like crawl
and and have blades attached to them. Because there is
something called a battle boomerang. Yeah, um man, that's that
seems dangerous. Yea, it seems totally dangerous. I'll bet you
can find that at like a head shop somewhere next
(16:43):
to like a dragon pewter statue or something. You're probably
the deal you can bind together for cheaper. Um. Some
of them do. Some of them have what's called turbulators though,
which are can be a little bumps and pits on
top which can increase the lift even more. And uh,
I read an interview with one boomerang builder, and he
was like, you can't. You know, I'm sure like NERF
(17:04):
can with their their you know, soft ones, but like
a true large three ft wooden boomerang, he said, you
can't computerize these and build them like they kind of
need to be handcrafted and thrown and then tweaked and
then thrown so you get it just right. And I
saw um one of the U S Boomerang team guys
demonstrating on video and he just put like a rubber
(17:26):
band on his two I guess adjust it. So that
makes sense, yeah, because you know, like if you're if
you have a ceiling fan or something like that, you
can add weights or something to stabilize it. That kind
of thing. Yeah, Or when you get a when you
get your tires and start installed in your car, you know,
they put those little on those lead weights they to
uh what's it called align it? Yeah, to align it
(17:49):
they put on that machine and if it's wobbling, they'll
add the little weights. Yeah. I thought they thought there's
a wizard in back. You're always in the waiting room
drinking coffee and reading, browsing thelar making executer dragon statutes. No,
it's kind of cool Actually, I think it's kind of cool.
It's really kind of nerdy to watch your tires get aligned,
to put it on the machine and spin it, and
(18:09):
it's really kind of just like this, and they look
at it and if it's if it's wabbling at all,
they know exactly where to tap on these little weights,
because yeah, you don't want your tires to be the gyroscope,
not at all. You don't. That makes for unsafe driving.
Uh So I guess we should after this message break
teach you how to throw a boomerang. All right, you've
(18:38):
got your boomerang. You're out in the field or on
the beach. Beach is gonna be tough because wind is
one of the forces that are going to act on
that boomerang. There are five forces nervous force of gravity,
the force caused by that propeller motion, the force of
your throw, uh, force caused by uneven speed of the wing,
(19:00):
and then the wind. And the guy that I watched
throw on on YouTube um said that he liked to
throw on with a slight breeze in his face. And
he said that that Um, it depends on the angle
at which you're going to release it, though, depending on
how the wind, and there's a lot of trial and
air involved, and it's yeah, apparently you you want wind.
(19:20):
I couldn't figure out what the deal is with this,
but um it somehow helps the boomerang move. But you
have what's called an angle of attack, and that's basically
how you orient yourself to the wind. The winds blowing
in your face, you should turn and face. You don't
want your shoulder now being hit by the wind, because
(19:41):
that's ninety degrees. He turned a little bit to the right,
so probably about like forty five degrees, and that's what
you throw too, So you're throwing at an angle to
the direction the wind is coming in. Yeah, but this
guy kind of worked it out like he threw the um,
you know, he kind of measured the wind. Uh, you know,
did the old finger test. Yeah, and he said, I'm
gonna angle myself a little bit to the right and
(20:03):
I'm gonna throw it. And he said, and it should
land just in front of me. It went behind him.
And he was like, well, I was wrong, so I
didn't have a good wind measurement, so let me angle
a little bit more, and sure enough, the thing came
right back to him. Nice. So it all depends on
what angle against the wind that you throw that thing,
Bob say, Oh man, I can't stand that guy, really,
(20:27):
Bob Seeker. Yeah, I don't have anything against him, honestly. Yeah,
that old time rock and roll song. I just turned
that a song. That's his first piano keys. Yeah, I
hate that song. Yeah, but overall I think Bob Seekers. Okay,
he seems fine. He's a he's a working man. Yeah, yeah,
turned the page baby. Oh yeah, I don't like that
song either. I guess it's like against the wind, like
(20:48):
a rock Oh. I hate that song, Hollywood Knights. That's
a terrible song too. You hate Bob Seeker, No, but
I don't mind against the Wind. Surely there's other Bob
Seekers songs outre Bob, get in touch with us and
introduced me to your catalog. That would be great if
he was a listener. Actually, he's just got a single
tier doing on his cheeks. All right, So where were
(21:10):
we we are? All right? You're gonna hold the boomerang
with the V with the elbow pointing towards you and
the V pointing out away from you, and again up
and down. It's vertically oriented. Yeah, vertically orient but at
a slight tilt, like you don't want it completely straight
up and down, but you're not throwing it like horizontally
Like no, no, you're not gonna get very far that way. No.
(21:30):
Actually it does go up and then comes back down
in a loop. It basically does totally do something. Yeah,
but interesting. Yeah, the thing is it's kind of dangerous,
so you don't want to mess around with it. Yeah,
I mean we should point that out. These things are
you know, heavy and made of wood and they come
you know you're throwing it hard. Well yeah, I mean
let's cut to the chase. Apparently when you throw a
(21:52):
frisbee or a boomerang, which are virtually interchangeable in my mind,
but they're really not not at all. Um, you want
to keep your eye on it at all times, and
if you ever lose sight of it, you don't look
around for it. You need to go take cover, cover
your head and shout heads up and get everybody else
(22:13):
to cover their heads too, because that thing can come
back and collock somebody. Yeah, and that's if you haven't
thrown it right. Like when I've seen the correct boomerang toss,
it lands like a helicopter. Um, you know, straight up
and down. So it's completely straight up and down. What
what's the next step? All right, So you've got that
v point pointing away from you, and you want putting
at you. No, no no, no, the two the you want
(22:35):
the point facing towards you and the be facing away
from you, and you want It's super important this part
is you want that flat side. Remember we talked about
the airfoil. You want the flat side facing out so
to your right. If you're a right handed thrower, if
you don't do that right then you're you're not gonna
have a good result. Yeah, you would only probably tilt
(22:55):
it to the left of the wind if you're left handed.
I would guess I don't know about that, Okay, I
don't endorse that state. Okay. Um, So you're gonna hold
it at the bottom of the wing, um like they
say a pinch grip. The guy in the video called
his a little pistol grip, like with two fingers and
a thumb, and um, you want to snap your wrist
(23:17):
when you throw it. And he didn't throw it super hard,
like you don't have to really wing it. Yeah, he didn't.
He didn't sound like stephie Graff when he threw it
or anything. Monica Sellis You mean I thought stephie Graft
did that too? Was that Monica Sellis? There's a lot
of grunters, but Monica Sellis she had it. That's who
I meant. Then, but she got stabbed. Look what happened
(23:37):
to her. Oh gosh, I thought that was stephie Graff too.
Did you know stephie Graff and Andre Agasi are married? Yeah?
Isn't that cute? It's adorable? Okay, you would be funny
as if their kids were terrible at dinnis. They just
trip over their rackets whatever. Um, Bob seekers their coach,
that's right, he's they're bad mitten coach. All right. So
(23:59):
you you are snapping your wrist. You're throwing it basically
like a baseball at a little slight angle, and you're
gonna snap that wrist to give it the good spin. Um,
you throw it vertically and hopefully it's gonna go out
and up and curve around and then land back down
fairly softly, somewhere close to where you are. And you
(24:19):
don't want to try and catch it with your hand
like in a cartoon. Well you can, but you want
to clap your hands together on yeah, yeah, like, don't
try and catch it like a frisbee. No, but I
think if you are a boomerang throwing person, you are
trying to catch each one. Oh yeah, yeah, but you're
a one hand and it's you clap it together, you
trap it in between your two hands. Yeah. And if
(24:41):
you're catching a frisbee like that, then God help you. Yeah,
you're gonna get laughed at. But it's safe to It's
just you don't really have to be worried about it. Frisbee,
it's super safe. Uh. I don't think I have anything else?
Is that it? Well, just one other thing. Um. When
I said that it's spinning around three axes. If were
impressed with that, prepared to have your mind blown even more.
(25:04):
It's spinning around three axes to lay down flat from
the torque. It's also spinning around an additional three axes
to follow that arc in a giant circle and come
back to you. So technically a boomerang when you throw
it is spinning on six different axis from the point
of release to the point of landing. Wow, you're not neat.
(25:27):
It's pretty neat. Yeah, it's neat. And like this is
one of those things where people were throwing these things
long before we knew anything about how they actually worked.
People figured them out, and then science came along afterward
and said, oh, well, this is how it works, but
this stuff is so complex. Really kind of exposes that
moment in science where you're like, I kind of have
(25:47):
to have faith in this because I understand it so
thinly that I just have to have faith that this
is correct. And it's almost virtually the same thing as saying, well,
the there's the gray wizard is the one who's moving
it around in an invisible circle back to you because
he wants you to prosper and not have to make
a boomerang every time. Virtually the same thing at this
(26:09):
point in my understanding. Yeah, they're a great teaching tool
as well. Um, I imagine if you're trying to teach
physics in gyroscopic procession, then the problem is everybody, almost
everybody I saw, except for the Japanese paper I think
it was titled what makes a Boomerang come Back? Um,
we're just terrible at explaining it. They understood everything, but
they could not explain it in anything approaching Layman's terms.
(26:32):
You know, I read a popular science article. Um, I
think it's called the Science of Boomerangs. That was pretty good.
Wish you would have sent that to me because I've
been agonizing over this for many, many, many, many many hours.
I just figured you had your Japanese sources and we're good.
It was in English too, well, of course it was,
uh because gen Japanese. So good. Uh. If you want
(26:56):
to know more about boomerangs, you can look up stuff
all over the web. But why not star at our
website how Stuff works dot Com. It's type that word
in the search bar and it will bring it up.
And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.
I'm just gonna call this I split Atoms for a Living,
So you know we're on the wrong track already. Yeah,
(27:18):
we're going to be corrected. Uh yeah, but he's very
nice about it. I split Atoms for Living at a
nuclear power plant. So I was really excited that you
did a podcast on nuclear science topic. Um. You guys
really did a great job actually of breaking down a
topic and making it accessible to a wide audience. Something
I personally feel that organizations involved with new nuclear technology
tend to struggle with a little bit Um anyway, I'm
(27:40):
running in with a correction. You sayd that nuclear fission
reactions involved the electromagnetic force, while nuclear fusion reactions involved
the strong nuclear force. I remember saying that both of
these reactions actually get their energy from the same strong
nuclear force. In both cases, if you were to measure
the mass of the material before the reaction compared that
(28:00):
to the material after the reaction, you would find that
there's less because some of the strong nuclear force holding
the atoms together was released his energy. The difference in
the energy release pretty much comes down to how much
of this mass was converted divided by the mass of
the atoms involved. Hey, let's see. The thing is is
like that makes total and complete sense if you think
(28:20):
about it. Sure that that makes it irritating that we
got it wrong. Uh. Since adams um good for fusion
are much lighter than adams good for fission, their reactions
are a bit stronger. Reactions which involve the release of
stored electromagnetic energy are actually all of the reactions that
involve electrons, which includes chemical reactions, Since this is a
much weaker force. That's why there are such a huge
(28:42):
energy difference between burning coal and nuclear energy. As you
pointed out, the podcasts millions of times more potent. So
thanks again guys. Looking forward to the next one, and
that is Jeffrey Hausiman from He's a reactor engineer in Zachary, Louisiana.
Thank you very much. What's his name again, Jeffrey, Jeffrey.
Appreciate that we love hearing from experts in the field. Uh.
(29:06):
If you're an expert in your field and you want
to correct us about something or whatever we want to
hear from you, you can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast and join us on Facebook dot com,
slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
and you can join us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
(29:30):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works
dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Noel Is
with us today. Yes, producing, Yeah, which makes it a
super special stuff you should know, a more here stute
(00:22):
stuff you should know. Yeah, that's right. Although old to
get a haircut, I know. He looks like a buddy
of mine from elementary school. Your elementary school for a
net a full beard. No, without he took away the
beard would be like any number of my friends from
elementary school. Yeah. There was always that one guy though
that had the early early facial hair. My you know,
(00:42):
jimsa Middle Eastern. He sort of had a little mustache
in like the seventh grade. I had a friend named
ron in Uh in elementary school. Man. He had like
a deep voice and like the mustache and everything. It
may have been fourth or fifth grade. Now he sells
steer is. Yeah, so obviously we're talking boomerangs, Chuck, that's right,
(01:06):
And um, if you associate boomerangs with Australia, there's actually
a pretty good reason for that. It turns out the boomerangs,
what do you think of a boomerang, which is kind
of like a crescent shaped stick that you throw and
it just comes back to you eventually and you catch
it and look at your friends and say pretty cool.
Huh yeah there, Like how do you do that? That
(01:28):
was most people think perfected in um by aborigines in Australia.
That's right. If you want to go back even further, UM, well,
there's a couple of types of boomerangs. Well, there's many
types of boomerangs, but two main categories is one that
returns to you that you play with, and the one
that you go out and try and kill animals with
(01:48):
that does not return to you. UM. I call those
the sad boomerangs. Some people call him rabbit sticks rabbit
Oh no, I know, isn't that mean? But if you
want to learn how to make one yourself, go to
um Survival Skills, the website the Hunting Boomerang. It's actually
it's pretty cool. This guy does. He makes he's he
shows you step by step how to make a boomerang
(02:12):
natural skills, I'm sorry skill. He just goes out in
the woods and finds like a kind of roughly boomerang
shape stick and then use it into like a functioning,
non returning boomerang is pretty awesome. Well, and that's what
people theorize is how the boomerang came about. Um Back
in Took Took's day, they would eventually learn to take
(02:34):
a club and beat an animal on the head. And
then maybe one of Took Took's rand was smart enough
to say, Hey, maybe if I throw this at the
animal from a distance, I won't scare them away, or
that animals faster than I can run, But I can
throw a stick faster than the animal can run. Let
me hit it in the head with the stick. That's right.
And so over time, just like with any early tool
(02:57):
um evolution, I guess you would uh find sticks that
flew better and further and further, and eventually they sort
of took the shape of a boomerang because of its
unique flying properties. Yeah, they figured out that like a
curved stick, well, you can aim it more easily and
it'll fly longer. So they started selecting for those kind
(03:18):
of sticks, and then they started making those sticks themselves,
like somebody from the Natural Skills website would. Yeah, the
two the the design of the two different branches made
it more stable. Yeah, and we'll get into the mind
bending physics behind a boomerang. Boomerangs, frankly, are magic sticks
of physics. They're almost they're almost it's almost impossible to
(03:43):
understand them, like what's going on? But we're gonna do
our best to explain it. And it's with a non
returning boomerang. It's kind of straightforward. It's the returning boomerang
that they say the Aboriginal Australians were the first to invent.
That is really difficult to grasp the physics behind. Yeah,
and the oldest non returning boomerang they found in Poland
(04:05):
from about twenty years ago. Yeah, that's surprising to me.
And what that was that far ago? Know that it
was in Poland? Oh, because I think of the boomerangs
exclusively associated with Oceania. Yeah not, Yeah, they were. They
were found in Native American tribes too, and stuff kind
of all over the world. So Australian Aborigines use something
(04:25):
called a kylie um exclusively for hunting at first, and
they think, and this is I think the netst thing,
because you certainly can't, you know, like find this out factually,
but they think that eventually they stumbled upon one that
kind of came back and they thought it was fun,
so they started throwing returning boomerangs. Yeah, because it's like
(04:47):
just to get their kicks, just for kicks. Because returning
boomerang you can't use for hunting well now, because if
you if you throw returning boomerang, can hit an animal.
If you hit the animal, it's not going to return
back to you. That's that, it's not real. That same
just cartoons everybody. So that's why there's two types. There's
ones that you brain an animal with and there's another
(05:07):
that you just throw around to impress your friends. That's right.
And apparently though the Aboriginal Australians figured out how to
use returning boomerangs to hunt. They would put some nets
up in trees. They would throw the boomerang, the returning boomerang,
and then whoever was best at making like an eagle
or hawks call would make that call and it'd scare
(05:30):
all the birds because they'd see this thing flying here
a hawks call, and they fly into the nets and
the Aborigines would eat them. Not a bad idea. So
that's pretty much the history of boomerangs. Yeah, and they
you know, no one owns a patent on the boomerang.
There are many kinds of boomerangs that people have patented,
of course, but the original boomerang was just hey, this
was something we figured out on our own. It's like DNA,
(05:54):
it belongs to the ages, it belongs to the universe.
So you're returning boomerang is going to be a little
lighter obviously, because you're not trying to kill a rabbit.
It's just for showing off. Yeah, and I've even you know,
they have the little uh um nerf versions for kids.
I had one of those when I was a kid,
the little uh three pronged boomerang, and those are kind
(06:15):
of fun. But if you look at videos of the
real deal, like large three foot wooden boomerangs, it's pretty
impressive to see. Like, you know, it's it's a tough
thing to do. You're not just going out there in
your first try and have to fly back to you.
There's actually like boomerang teams around the world. Yeah, us
boomerang team. Unless you're a wonder kin of course or natural,
I'm sure to do it you on your first time.
(06:37):
I'm sure it's happened before. Maybe this maybe want to
get a boomerang, By the way, did are you going to?
I don't know, maybe the boomerang team. What I'm hoping
is a fan makes handcrafted boomerangs and since oh yeah,
I hadn't thought about that, I'll bet we have at
least one boomerang maker listener, So send us to Yeah nice,
thanks Chuck. That way we can go out and perform
(06:59):
a little two man boomerang. Maybe we can cross them
and everything. So um the Again, the non returning boomerangs
are pretty straightforward. It's the returning boomerangs that are lighter,
and they're they're made to be more aerodynamic. And the
proper way to throw a returning boomerang is um to
(07:20):
hold it at a vertical angle, to hold it up
and down right, which is weird because if you ever
see somebody throw a boomerang, when it comes back, it's horizontal.
It's horizontally oriented. Yeah, it kind of just lands very
softly like a helicopter. Right. The thing is is, it
goes from upright to horizontal in the midst of this
(07:41):
path and it comes back to you. And if you
stop and think about it like that makes zero sense whatsoever.
A non returning boomerang certainly doesn't do either. Of those things.
It's just the returning boomerang. And the whole reason behind
this is because of the design of the returning boomerang.
(08:02):
It's basically a two pronged propeller that's not attached to
anything that thanks to the force you give it and
it's rotation and a whole other bunch of stuff that
will get into it leans to the it falls to
the left, turns clockwise, and comes back to you. That's
(08:23):
if you're a right handed thrower with the right handed boomerang.
If you're a left handed person, you have to have
a left handed boomerang. It's a mirror image of the
right handed boomerang. If you try to throw a right
handed boomerang with your left hand, it's not gonna work out.
So well, I bet there's one person out there it's like, oh,
I had no idea. So we're gonna muster up our
(08:44):
courage and and get into the physics of the boomerang
right after this. Alright, chuck, here we go. All right, So,
I guess the first thing we should talk about is
a little bit about just the physical design of the
boomerang itself. The wings are slightly tilted, so it creates
(09:05):
what's called an airfoil, just like an airplane wing. Look
out your plane window there and you're sitting on the wing.
You're going to notice that the top of it is
rounded and the bottom of it is flat, and that
is going to give a plane lift and a boomerang lift. Right.
The the air going over the top of the wing,
because it's curved in like a tear drop shape. Um,
(09:27):
it picks up speed right, so the air speed is increased,
which means the air pressure is also increased. Well beneath
the wing it's flat, the air is just going through
like it's whatever, but the air pressure is higher, so
you have lower air pressure at the top, higher pressure
at the bottom. That means that you have left that
believe that it's Bernoulli's principle, is it? I think? So?
(09:50):
Show off? No, not really so. So that's that's the
whole thing behind both airplane wings, like you said, and
boomerang wings. Because again, if you if you really kind
of want to start to understand boomerangs, um, first of all,
do more research than just listening to this podcast. But secondly,
you have to think of the boomerang is basically two
(10:11):
airplane wings facing the opposite direction connected together. Okay, that's right,
and that forms essentially a propeller. Yeah, and uh, a
propeller is um. Well, it's it's basically, if you think
about a boomerang, it has an axis, just like a
propeller does, but the axis isn't there. That makes sense,
(10:32):
it's invisible. The propeller is connected to something because it
has to lift the helicopter propeller cause that's the lift
the helicopter, or if it's on the front of a plane,
it's gonna pull that plane forward and up. Um, which
is sort of a key we'll get to in a second. Um.
But it's the same principle. But a boomerang just has
an invisible access let's say. Okay, so it does, and
(10:53):
it's very important because at that axis, which you can
just imagine is in the center of the boomerang where
the two wings come together, that's the access of rotation
that the boomerang has. It's spin. Yeah, and this article
does a good job of pointing out that. You would think,
then if you just turned it completely horizontally like a frisbee,
it would act like a helicopter propeller and just go up, yes,
(11:16):
straight up, or if you turned it completely vertically, which
is how you're supposed to throw it, it would just
go side to side. But it doesn't do either one
of those things. No, and it doesn't. And the reason
why is because if you turn on an air airplane
propeller or a helicopter propeller rotor, it's it starts from
(11:36):
a stationary position and just starts spinning, exactly the the
boomerang doesn't start from a stationary position. It starts spinning
along that central axis. And it's also thrown. Yeah, it's
got that forward momentum already exactly. So it has now
because you threw this thing. You threw it and it
started spinning around its own axis. But you also gave
(11:58):
it that forward momentum, which is linear momentum, which means
that it's now spinning around two axes. That's right, Okay,
this is is this gyroscopic procession. We're close, we're almost there,
and we get there chucked because of these two axes.
So consider this. So the thing is just spinning around.
You've just thrown in. Its upright at a vertical it's
(12:20):
vertically oriented to the earth, and you throw it, and
when you throw it say it has a spin around
that imaginary axis in the middle of the boomerang or
at that point at like twenty kilometers an hour. Okay,
because in Australia koter exactly well. Plus also I read
a Japanese paper on this. That's what they use and
(12:42):
it makes sense. Um, And but you threw it that
that that energy your arm transferred to it when you
threw the frisbee to which gave it its linear momentum.
Say that's making it move through space at a hundred
kilometers per hour. Okay, that's right. So as the things spinning,
whatever blade is at the top of the of the
(13:05):
spin is going in the direction that you threw it, right,
and you threw it at a hundred miles an hour,
and it's spinning at twenty kilometers an hour. That means
that that top blade is spinning at a hundred and
twenty kilometers an hour. You said miles. But yeah, we
get it, Okay. I'm like, I'm just just barely hanging
(13:26):
on here. The bottom one, though, is going in the
opposite direction, so you're it's actually moving at twenty or
eighty kilometers per hour. So the top is a hundred
and twenty. The bottom one is working in the opposite direction,
so it's going eighty kilometers per hour. But these things
are attached to the same thing, so this difference actually
(13:49):
creates a difference in air pressure to its vertical orientation,
which creates torque, which tilts it. Now we've entered gyros
copic procession. Yeah, and I think I precession. I think
I sort of said it like procession, but it's within
e Yeah, it's like what gives Earth seasons. Yeah, that wobble.
(14:09):
The spin is another part of a very important part
because when you throw it, and we'll get into exactly
how to throw it here in a bit, but you
want to give it a good wrist snap to give
it as much spin as possible. Uh. And the spin
is gonna be determined basically the rate of spin by
a few things. The length to the wings, um, you know,
if they're these huge wings, it's the spin isn't going
(14:29):
to be as great, Uh, the angle that they're joined,
and the amount of force applied by you the thrower.
And just like a gyroscope, which if we really wanted
to torture ourselves, we should do one on gyroscopes. Man,
that would be melt. My brain would melt. Yeah, I
just my brain didn't process that stuff well. But um,
like a gyroscope, it's gonna have more stability the faster
(14:50):
it spin. So that's why you want that good risk snap. Yeah.
And the reason why it has more stabilities because so
that torque, that pressure that that's being created by that
difference in air pressure. Um, that forces being pushed down
is actually stabilized throughout the spin of the boomerang. Right. Yeah.
Like if you're going super fast on a bicycle and
(15:12):
you take your hands off the handlebars, you're gonna keep
going straight. If you're going like super slow, you're gonna
start wobbling around, right exactly. Um. The thing is is
that pressure, that force of torque is constant, so it
eventually because I think procession is if you're throwing with
your right hand, procession always comes on in a counterclockwise motion.
(15:35):
The torque turns, It turns the boomerang to the sides,
which is why it eventually comes back around to you horizontally.
That's what lays it down, and it also brings it
in an arc that forms a circular path that comes
back to you. It's all gyroscopic precession. And it's because
the boomerang, this little simple stick that's basically one crescent
(15:59):
shaped piece of wood, turns into a gyroscope that that
turns on three axis all at once. Yeah, all on
one throw. And so it goes from straight it goes
from stationary being straight up and down to spinning and
curving around an arc back to you at a hundred
kilometers an hour, all because you tossed it correctly. Yeah.
(16:22):
And the the design, I mean, there are many, many
different designs of boomerangs. Um, Like I said, they can
have two wings, three four, you can look like crawl
and and have blades attached to them. Because there is
something called a battle boomerang. Yeah, um man, that's that
seems dangerous. Yea, it seems totally dangerous. I'll bet you
can find that at like a head shop somewhere next
(16:43):
to like a dragon pewter statue or something. You're probably
the deal you can bind together for cheaper. Um. Some
of them do. Some of them have what's called turbulators though,
which are can be a little bumps and pits on
top which can increase the lift even more. And uh,
I read an interview with one boomerang builder, and he
was like, you can't. You know, I'm sure like NERF
(17:04):
can with their their you know, soft ones, but like
a true large three ft wooden boomerang, he said, you
can't computerize these and build them like they kind of
need to be handcrafted and thrown and then tweaked and
then thrown so you get it just right. And I
saw um one of the U S Boomerang team guys
demonstrating on video and he just put like a rubber
(17:26):
band on his two I guess adjust it. So that
makes sense, yeah, because you know, like if you're if
you have a ceiling fan or something like that, you
can add weights or something to stabilize it. That kind
of thing. Yeah, Or when you get a when you
get your tires and start installed in your car, you know,
they put those little on those lead weights they to
uh what's it called align it? Yeah, to align it
(17:49):
they put on that machine and if it's wobbling, they'll
add the little weights. Yeah. I thought they thought there's
a wizard in back. You're always in the waiting room
drinking coffee and reading, browsing thelar making executer dragon statutes. No,
it's kind of cool Actually, I think it's kind of cool.
It's really kind of nerdy to watch your tires get aligned,
to put it on the machine and spin it, and
(18:09):
it's really kind of just like this, and they look
at it and if it's if it's wabbling at all,
they know exactly where to tap on these little weights,
because yeah, you don't want your tires to be the gyroscope,
not at all. You don't. That makes for unsafe driving.
Uh So I guess we should after this message break
teach you how to throw a boomerang. All right, you've
(18:38):
got your boomerang. You're out in the field or on
the beach. Beach is gonna be tough because wind is
one of the forces that are going to act on
that boomerang. There are five forces nervous force of gravity,
the force caused by that propeller motion, the force of
your throw, uh, force caused by uneven speed of the wing,
(19:00):
and then the wind. And the guy that I watched
throw on on YouTube um said that he liked to
throw on with a slight breeze in his face. And
he said that that Um, it depends on the angle
at which you're going to release it, though, depending on
how the wind, and there's a lot of trial and
air involved, and it's yeah, apparently you you want wind.
(19:20):
I couldn't figure out what the deal is with this,
but um it somehow helps the boomerang move. But you
have what's called an angle of attack, and that's basically
how you orient yourself to the wind. The winds blowing
in your face, you should turn and face. You don't
want your shoulder now being hit by the wind, because
(19:41):
that's ninety degrees. He turned a little bit to the right,
so probably about like forty five degrees, and that's what
you throw too, So you're throwing at an angle to
the direction the wind is coming in. Yeah, but this
guy kind of worked it out like he threw the um,
you know, he kind of measured the wind. Uh, you know,
did the old finger test. Yeah, and he said, I'm
gonna angle myself a little bit to the right and
(20:03):
I'm gonna throw it. And he said, and it should
land just in front of me. It went behind him.
And he was like, well, I was wrong, so I
didn't have a good wind measurement, so let me angle
a little bit more, and sure enough, the thing came
right back to him. Nice. So it all depends on
what angle against the wind that you throw that thing,
Bob say, Oh man, I can't stand that guy, really,
(20:27):
Bob Seeker. Yeah, I don't have anything against him, honestly. Yeah,
that old time rock and roll song. I just turned
that a song. That's his first piano keys. Yeah, I
hate that song. Yeah, but overall I think Bob Seekers. Okay,
he seems fine. He's a he's a working man. Yeah, yeah,
turned the page baby. Oh yeah, I don't like that
song either. I guess it's like against the wind, like
(20:48):
a rock Oh. I hate that song, Hollywood Knights. That's
a terrible song too. You hate Bob Seeker, No, but
I don't mind against the Wind. Surely there's other Bob
Seekers songs outre Bob, get in touch with us and
introduced me to your catalog. That would be great if
he was a listener. Actually, he's just got a single
tier doing on his cheeks. All right, So where were
(21:10):
we we are? All right? You're gonna hold the boomerang
with the V with the elbow pointing towards you and
the V pointing out away from you, and again up
and down. It's vertically oriented. Yeah, vertically orient but at
a slight tilt, like you don't want it completely straight
up and down, but you're not throwing it like horizontally
Like no, no, you're not gonna get very far that way. No.
(21:30):
Actually it does go up and then comes back down
in a loop. It basically does totally do something. Yeah,
but interesting. Yeah, the thing is it's kind of dangerous,
so you don't want to mess around with it. Yeah,
I mean we should point that out. These things are
you know, heavy and made of wood and they come
you know you're throwing it hard. Well yeah, I mean
let's cut to the chase. Apparently when you throw a
(21:52):
frisbee or a boomerang, which are virtually interchangeable in my mind,
but they're really not not at all. Um, you want
to keep your eye on it at all times, and
if you ever lose sight of it, you don't look
around for it. You need to go take cover, cover
your head and shout heads up and get everybody else
(22:13):
to cover their heads too, because that thing can come
back and collock somebody. Yeah, and that's if you haven't
thrown it right. Like when I've seen the correct boomerang toss,
it lands like a helicopter. Um, you know, straight up
and down. So it's completely straight up and down. What
what's the next step? All right, So you've got that
v point pointing away from you, and you want putting
at you. No, no no, no, the two the you want
(22:35):
the point facing towards you and the be facing away
from you, and you want It's super important this part
is you want that flat side. Remember we talked about
the airfoil. You want the flat side facing out so
to your right. If you're a right handed thrower, if
you don't do that right then you're you're not gonna
have a good result. Yeah, you would only probably tilt
(22:55):
it to the left of the wind if you're left handed.
I would guess I don't know about that, Okay, I
don't endorse that state. Okay. Um, So you're gonna hold
it at the bottom of the wing, um like they
say a pinch grip. The guy in the video called
his a little pistol grip, like with two fingers and
a thumb, and um, you want to snap your wrist
(23:17):
when you throw it. And he didn't throw it super hard,
like you don't have to really wing it. Yeah, he didn't.
He didn't sound like stephie Graff when he threw it
or anything. Monica Sellis You mean I thought stephie Graft
did that too? Was that Monica Sellis? There's a lot
of grunters, but Monica Sellis she had it. That's who
I meant. Then, but she got stabbed. Look what happened
(23:37):
to her. Oh gosh, I thought that was stephie Graff too.
Did you know stephie Graff and Andre Agasi are married? Yeah?
Isn't that cute? It's adorable? Okay, you would be funny
as if their kids were terrible at dinnis. They just
trip over their rackets whatever. Um, Bob seekers their coach,
that's right, he's they're bad mitten coach. All right. So
(23:59):
you you are snapping your wrist. You're throwing it basically
like a baseball at a little slight angle, and you're
gonna snap that wrist to give it the good spin. Um,
you throw it vertically and hopefully it's gonna go out
and up and curve around and then land back down
fairly softly, somewhere close to where you are. And you
(24:19):
don't want to try and catch it with your hand
like in a cartoon. Well you can, but you want
to clap your hands together on yeah, yeah, like, don't
try and catch it like a frisbee. No, but I
think if you are a boomerang throwing person, you are
trying to catch each one. Oh yeah, yeah, but you're
a one hand and it's you clap it together, you
trap it in between your two hands. Yeah. And if
(24:41):
you're catching a frisbee like that, then God help you. Yeah,
you're gonna get laughed at. But it's safe to It's
just you don't really have to be worried about it. Frisbee,
it's super safe. Uh. I don't think I have anything else?
Is that it? Well, just one other thing. Um. When
I said that it's spinning around three axes. If were
impressed with that, prepared to have your mind blown even more.
(25:04):
It's spinning around three axes to lay down flat from
the torque. It's also spinning around an additional three axes
to follow that arc in a giant circle and come
back to you. So technically a boomerang when you throw
it is spinning on six different axis from the point
of release to the point of landing. Wow, you're not neat.
(25:27):
It's pretty neat. Yeah, it's neat. And like this is
one of those things where people were throwing these things
long before we knew anything about how they actually worked.
People figured them out, and then science came along afterward
and said, oh, well, this is how it works, but
this stuff is so complex. Really kind of exposes that
moment in science where you're like, I kind of have
(25:47):
to have faith in this because I understand it so
thinly that I just have to have faith that this
is correct. And it's almost virtually the same thing as saying, well,
the there's the gray wizard is the one who's moving
it around in an invisible circle back to you because
he wants you to prosper and not have to make
a boomerang every time. Virtually the same thing at this
(26:09):
point in my understanding. Yeah, they're a great teaching tool
as well. Um, I imagine if you're trying to teach
physics in gyroscopic procession, then the problem is everybody, almost
everybody I saw, except for the Japanese paper I think
it was titled what makes a Boomerang come Back? Um,
we're just terrible at explaining it. They understood everything, but
they could not explain it in anything approaching Layman's terms.
(26:32):
You know, I read a popular science article. Um, I
think it's called the Science of Boomerangs. That was pretty good.
Wish you would have sent that to me because I've
been agonizing over this for many, many, many, many many hours.
I just figured you had your Japanese sources and we're good.
It was in English too, well, of course it was,
uh because gen Japanese. So good. Uh. If you want
(26:56):
to know more about boomerangs, you can look up stuff
all over the web. But why not star at our
website how Stuff works dot Com. It's type that word
in the search bar and it will bring it up.
And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.
I'm just gonna call this I split Atoms for a Living,
So you know we're on the wrong track already. Yeah,
(27:18):
we're going to be corrected. Uh yeah, but he's very
nice about it. I split Atoms for Living at a
nuclear power plant. So I was really excited that you
did a podcast on nuclear science topic. Um. You guys
really did a great job actually of breaking down a
topic and making it accessible to a wide audience. Something
I personally feel that organizations involved with new nuclear technology
tend to struggle with a little bit Um anyway, I'm
(27:40):
running in with a correction. You sayd that nuclear fission
reactions involved the electromagnetic force, while nuclear fusion reactions involved
the strong nuclear force. I remember saying that both of
these reactions actually get their energy from the same strong
nuclear force. In both cases, if you were to measure
the mass of the material before the reaction compared that
(28:00):
to the material after the reaction, you would find that
there's less because some of the strong nuclear force holding
the atoms together was released his energy. The difference in
the energy release pretty much comes down to how much
of this mass was converted divided by the mass of
the atoms involved. Hey, let's see. The thing is is
like that makes total and complete sense if you think
(28:20):
about it. Sure that that makes it irritating that we
got it wrong. Uh. Since adams um good for fusion
are much lighter than adams good for fission, their reactions
are a bit stronger. Reactions which involve the release of
stored electromagnetic energy are actually all of the reactions that
involve electrons, which includes chemical reactions, Since this is a
much weaker force. That's why there are such a huge
(28:42):
energy difference between burning coal and nuclear energy. As you
pointed out, the podcasts millions of times more potent. So
thanks again guys. Looking forward to the next one, and
that is Jeffrey Hausiman from He's a reactor engineer in Zachary, Louisiana.
Thank you very much. What's his name again, Jeffrey, Jeffrey.
Appreciate that we love hearing from experts in the field. Uh.
(29:06):
If you're an expert in your field and you want
to correct us about something or whatever we want to
hear from you, you can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast and join us on Facebook dot com,
slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
and you can join us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
(29:30):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works
dot com
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