5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Favorable Review, January 6, 2007
This review is from: Spinning Flight: Dynamics of Frisbees, Boomerangs, Samaras, and Skipping Stones (Hardcover)
(I am the author - I think the book is not half bad - but let me quote from a recent
review of the book by H. K. Moffatt {whom I do not know} in Nature magazine (Vol.444,
14 Dec 2006 p.820):
'In his fascinating book Spinning Flight, Ralph Lorenz provides a rich feast of examples
of such spinning bodies, some occurring naturally, some contrived for pleasure or for a
practical purpose, some exotic..........Lorenz covers these phenomena and their various
manifestations with great skill and economy of exposition, whetting the appetite for the
more detailed treatments that he cites in an extensive list of references, many quite recent...
The book is well organized....there may be something for every one within its attractively
designed cover
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Spinning Flight - the fascination of things that spin in the air and in space, January 14, 2007
This review is from: Spinning Flight: Dynamics of Frisbees, Boomerangs, Samaras, and Skipping Stones (Hardcover)
Spinning Flight is for the reader who is curious about spinning and flying things. Some may wonder why do skipping stones veer to the right, why does a Frisbee veer to the left at the end of its flight, why do golf balls have dimples, how does a boomerang work. Others may be interested in spin stabilization of bullets, bombs, rockets. Still others will be fascinated by the role of spin in spaceflight, the landing of probes on distant bodies or by what spin can tell about the formation and life story of asteroids and comets. Lorenz uses a minimum of vector mechanics and equations to explain these phenomena and provides many illustrations based on cleverly instrumented flight experiments. Next time you skip a stone, you will think of it as a rewarding experiment not just an idle pleasure.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
From theory to practice to experimentation: A great way to learn!, September 8, 2011
Spinning Flight by Ralph D. Lorenz is a fine addition to anyone's science library. While the book has a few shortcomings, overall it is a terrific discussion of spinning objects with a good balance of science and examples.
If you read no further, then buy the book and enjoy it. You won't regret it.
The text is a good exposition of the dynamics of flight for a potpourri of objects from balls, bullets, bombs, rockets, satellites, and Frisbees; to spinning parachutes, aircraft, boomerangs, skipping stones and bouncing bombs. Mr. Lorenz provides a short introduction into the mathematics needed to understand and then goes through examples. Lots of examples, applications, and popular activities to see where this work applies.
With each example, he gives you the object, how it behaves, why it behaves as it does, and he even gives graphs that describe these behaviors. The author often tells a story about the objects and how they evolved to objects we use today. The stories bring the science to life--if you don't like the science, you'll still like the stories.
For example, tennis balls. Originally tennis balls were hand stitched so no two flew exactly alike. Now, they are machine made and have a rubber core. The original balls were white, now they are yellow and come in many other colors for better visibility. Because the balls fly at a speed above the critical Reynolds number (see the book for what this is, or do a web search!) the "boundary layer is tripped into turbulence with a spin-dependent location." What does that mean? It means that when you add top spin, the ball will dive downward so a fast shot will still be in-bounds. Current tennis balls have a low drag, making for a fast tennis game. But, Mr. Lorenz tells us, the International Tennis Federation may introduce a larger ball; that would increase the drag and lead to a slower game. This is the basic (but not exhaustive) method of how the text flows. The object is introduced, details of its flight are given, and then some expository text and a story to boot.
Let me cite another example: did you know that if you put spin on a super ball, you can reverse its bounce? If the super ball is spinning backward, then because of its contact friction it can bounce at a backward direction instead of bouncing forward as it would without spin.
One area that's captivating is the spin on bullets, bombs, and rockets. The book gives you a good historical story of the various experiments performed to perfect this idea and it also gives you wonderful pictures of test shots. The book touches on spinning asteroids and how radar can be used to measure the spin period. (I was disappointed that more technical details were not here, but the ideas were still good to know.)
Frisbees are flying objects that most of us know. Naturally, the book discusses them and the treatment is well-done and detailed. It won't make you a better player, but it will make you marvel at how much science is in that platter of plastic.
The boomerang is touched upon, too, and with some historical details. For example, there are a variety of boomerangs depending on one's purpose. Some are used to fly over birds, scaring them to flight and then to capture. Some are heavy, meant for hunting and are intended to strike and thereby stun an animal. The book provides an interesting antidote of a boomerang throw that would be infinite. That is, if there were no ground to intercept the flight, how would the flight path look. It's mostly of theoretical interest but fascinating nonetheless.
I would fault the book for the following, however,. The pictures are okay, but the quality of the photos and graphs is a bit low. Some of the graphs are hard to read. The reader can still understand the plots, but he has to work at it.
The color pictures in the middle of the book would do better had they been placed within the text. That may be something the publisher does for costs but they would have livened-up the material if they appeared with the text.
The author shies away from some mathematics and generally presents his work with few equations. I don't know if that's because there simply aren't equations to describe the behavior (maybe we can only describe the motion through experimentation and plots) but I think there were plenty of opportunities for more in-depth mathematics than the author gave.
To end on a positive note, Mr. Lorenz gives something that others often do not. And it's a bonus worth having. At the end, he gives you a guide, complete with a schematic diagram (parts list, really) and program so that you, the reader, can instrument an object and collect flight data. Thus, the book goes from theory, to practice, to experimentation.
All in all, a great way to learn.
P.S. There's a part about bouncing bombs to avoid torpedo nets. What a cool application of spinning objects!
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