Flying disc

A flying disc is a disc-shaped gliding toy or sporting item that is generally plastic and roughly 20 to 25 centimetres (8 to 10 in) in diameter with a lip,[1]  used recreationally and competitively for throwing and catching, for example, in flying disc games. The shape of the disc, an airfoil in cross-section, allows it to fly by generating lift as it moves through the air while spinning. The termFrisbee, often used to generically describe all flying discs, is a registered trademark of the Wham-O toy company. Though such use is not encouraged by the company, the common use of the name as a generic term has put the trademark in jeopardy; accordingly, many "Frisbee" games are now known as "disc" games, like disc ultimate or disc golf.[2] [3]

Flying discs are thrown and caught for free-form (freestyle) recreation and as part of many flying disc games. A wide range of flying-disc variants are available commercially. Disc golf discs are usually smaller but denser and tailored for particular flight profiles to increase/decrease stability and distance. The longest recorded disc throw is by Simon Lizotte with a distance of 263.2 meters.[4]  Disc dog sports use relatively slow flying discs made of more pliable material to better resist a dog's bite and prevent injury to the dog. Flying rings are also available; they typically travel significantly farther than any traditional flying disc. There are also illuminated discs meant for nighttime play; they are made of a phosphorescent plastic or contain battery-powered light-emitting diodes. Others whistle when they reach a certain velocity in flight.



Contents
[hide]  *1 History  ==History[ edit] == Someone throwing a flying discPerson catching a flying discFred Morrison discovered a market for the modern-day flying disc[5]  in 1938 when he and future wife, Lucile, were offered 25 cents for a cake pan that they were tossing back and forth on a beach in Santa Monica, California. "That got the wheels turning, because you could buy a cake pan for five cents, and if people on the beach were willing to pay a quarter for it, well - there was a business," Morrison told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2007.[6]
 * 2 Flying disc games
 * 3 Physics
 * 4 See also
 * 5 References
 * 5.1 Further reading
 * 6 External links

The Morrisons continued their business until World War II, when Morrison served in the Army Air Force, flying a P-47s, and then was aprisoner of war. Mustered out, Morrison sketched a design for an aerodynamically improved flying disc that he called the Whirlo-Way. By 1948, after design modifications and experimentation with several prototypes, Morrison and business partner Warren Franscioni began producing the first plastic discs, renaming them the Flyin-Saucer in the wake of reported unidentified-flying-object sightings.

"We worked fairs, demonstrating it," Morrison told the Virginian-Pilot. The two of them once overheard someone saying the pair were using wires to make the discs hover, so they developed a sales pitch: "The Flyin-Saucer is free, but the invisible wire is $1." "That's where we learned we could sell these things," he said, because people were enthusiastic about them.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">Morrison and Franscioni ended their partnership in early 1950, and in 1954 Morrison formed his own company, called American Trends, to buy and sell Flyin-Saucers, which were by then being made of a flexible polypropylene plastic from Southern California Plastics, the original molder. After learning that he could produce his own disc more cheaply, in 1955 Morrison designed a new model, the Pluto Platter, the archetype of all modern flying discs. He sold the rights to Wham-O on January 23, 1957, and in 1958 Morrison was awarded U.S. Design Patent D183,626 for his product.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">In June 1957, Wham-O co-founder Richard Knerr decided to stimulate sales by giving the discs the additional brand name Frisbee (pronounced "friz'-bee"), after learning that Northeastern college students were calling the Pluto Platter by that name,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-CTV20070616_7-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[7]  the term "Frisbee" coming from the name of the Bridgeport, CT pie manufacturer Frisbie Pie Company.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-8" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[8]  "I thought the name was a horror. Terrible," Morrison told The Press-Enterprise of Riverside in 2007.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-latimes_9-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[9]  In 1982, Morrison told Forbes magazine that he had received about US$2 million in royalty payments and said: "I wouldn't change the name of it for the world."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-latimes_9-1" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[9]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">The man behind the Frisbee's phenomenal success, however, was Edward "Steady Ed" Headrick (Pasadena, Cal., June 28, 1924 — La Selva Beach, Cal., August 12, 2002), hired in 1964 as Wham-O's new general manager and vice president in charge of marketing. Headrick soon redesigned the Pluto Platter by reworking the rim thickness and top design, creating a more controllable disc that could be thrown accurately.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-10" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[10]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">Sales skyrocketed for the toy, which was marketed as a new sport. In 1964, the first professional model went on sale. Headrick patented the new design, highlighting the new raised ridges (the "Rings of Headrick") that stabilized flight and marketed and pushed the Professional Model Frisbee and "Frisbee" as a sport. (U.S. Patent3,359,678).<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-About980218_11-0" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[11]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">Headrick, who became known as the father of Frisbee sports,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-12" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[12]  later founded and appointed Dan "Stork" Roddick as head of the International Frisbee Association. Stork began establishing North American Series (NAS) tournament standards for various Frisbee sports such as Distance, Freestyle and Guts. Headrick later started the sport of disc golf<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-13" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[13] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-14" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[14]  that was first played with Frisbees and later with more aerodynamic beveled rim discs. Upon his death, Headrick was cremated, and, as requested by him, his ashes were molded into memorial Frisbees and given to family and close friends<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-15" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[15]  and sold to benefit The Ed Headrick Memorial Museum <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-16" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[16] ==Flying disc games<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == Main articles: Flying disc games and Flying disc freestyle<p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">A scene from the 1956 film Mohawk, a remake of Drums along the Mohawk (1939), features the Iroquois girls playing with an object recognisable as a frisbee. The game of guts was invented by the Healy Brothers in the 1950s and developed at the International Frisbee Tournament (IFT) in Eagle Harbor, Michigan. The game ofultimate, the most widely played disc game, began in the late 1960s with Joel Silver and Jared Kass. In the 1970s it developed as an organized sport with the creation of the Ultimate Players Association with Dan Roddick, Tom Kennedy and Irv Kalb. Double disc court was invented and introduced in the early 1970s by Jim Palmeri. In 1974, freestyle competition was created and introduced by Ken Westerfield and Discrafts Jim Kenner.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-17" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-size:11.1999998092651px;">[17]  In 1976, the game of disc golf was standardized with targets called "pole holes" invented and developed by Wham-O's Ed Headrick. ==Physics<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == Main article: Physics of flying discsUltimate being played indoors.Flying disc freestyle<p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">Lift is generated in the same way as a traditional airfoil, that is, by deflecting air downward.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">The rotating flying disc has a nearly vertical angular momentum vector, stabilizing its angle of attack via gyroscopic action. If the disc were not spinning, it would crash to pitch. When the disc is spinning, however, aerodynamic torque instead leads to precess about the spin axis, causing its trajectory to curve to the left or the right. Most discs are designed to be aerodynamically stable so that this roll is accurate for a fairly broad range of velocities and rates of spin. Many disc golf discs, however, are intentionally designed to be unstable. Higher rates of spin lead to more stability, and, for a given rate of spin, there is generally a range of velocities that are stable.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:17.9200000762939px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14.3999996185303px;">Even a slight deformation in a disc (called a "taco," which in extreme cases looks like a taco shell) can cause negative effects when throwing long range. A disk can be checked for these deformations by holding it horizontally at eye level and looking at the rim while slowly turning it.