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Thursday, 5 April 2012

Professor Nishiyama: King of Science - Boomerangs


Oh boy. When I was looking up Professor Yutaka Nishiyama's "plofile" for that finger counting article the other day, I noticed that the picture showed a shitload of boomerangs in the background. Well, bugger me, but the Prof's written an article on boomerangs.

Yeah, it turns out that Nishiyama is the Honorary Director of the Japanese Boomerang Association and he totally knows how boomerangs stay in the air, so click on to find out in comprehensive, yet surprisingly concise detail how gyroscopics, the Bernoulli principle, angular precession and inertial moments make a magical bent stick come back. Interestingly enough "boomerang" is a Japanese compound word where "boom" means "to go" and "er-ang" means "to come back"... as far as you know.

http://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/zemi/nishiyama/math2010/boomerang.pdf

But that's not all. Some lesser professors (I'm looking at you, Alexander S. Kuleshov) might stop at explaining the flight characteristics of non-disposable branches, but Professor Nishiyama has come up with a boomerang design that will create world peace and he's translated it into seventy different languages. Suck on that, Dr Hugh Hunt. Die in a fire, Associate Professor Richard Kelso. And that's why Nishiyama is Professor of Awesome at Hell Yeah University. So click the link and print ten billion of these at work tomorrow - don't worry about what your boss says; it's for world peace so it's fine.

http://www.kbn3.com/bip/index2.html

Ha ha ha ha! Ah ha ha! Oh wait, world peace. Right. Sorry
Nishiyama actually has book about why eggs are egg-shaped and why the number five exists, but sadly they're not available in English yet. But he does have a paper on the mathematics of stairway light switches so stay tuned for that little beauty.
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3 comments:

  1. ninthcouncil5 April 2012 at 20:06

    'Interestingly enough "boomerang" is a Japanese compound word where "boom" means "to go" and "er-ang" means "to come back"... as far as you know.'
    Nice try, but you're going to have to split the syllables up differently for that one to even attempt to get airborne, let alone come back :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. kodabar6 April 2012 at 20:46

      It's based on older Japanese words from the Heian period which are in turn derived from Chinese words, which is why they might sound a little unusual. Ahem. Cough, splutter.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous10 April 2012 at 01:18

      Thank you very much.
      http://www.osaka-ue.ac.jp/zemi/nishiyama/index.HTML

      "boomerang" is not a Japanese compound word but a Aborigine word as same as kangaroo. in Japan it means "return" or "come back."

      Yutaka Nishiyama

      Delete

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