Chakram: Spinning Death in Myth, War & Physics

Mercantile in Manhattan. Stuff you missed in history class has a show right before us, so you can really double down, learn more and buy your tickets today at New York Comic Con dot com slash NYCC hyphen presents Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from How Stuff Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I am Christian, sacred Christian. I have a question for you. I know that that you also consume a lot of fictional media that has uh,

you know, different crazy fight scenes, crazy weapons. What is the most appealing yet seemingly unrealistic weapon you've encountered before in your and you're you're reading and your viewing. Oh. I can answer this very easily because it's it was a movie that was super influential on me. It's actually a series of movies the Umbrella because um yeah, I talked about this on the show before. Because I grew up overseas, I ended up watching a lot of woosh yaw kind of kung fu movies when I was a kid.

And there's a series that Jet Lee was in in the early nineties late eighties called Once Upon a Time in China, and he plays this legendary Chinese uh character who I think it's a real person, but it's also ostensibly argued that these movies are like history revisionist. Anyways, this guy fights with an umbrella. That's his penguin style. He like he uses the umbrella as like a defensive

thing against swords and other stuff like that. But then he will also like occasionally open it up and like spin it to kind of like distract his enemy as well. He does like backflips and stuff. I I love those movies so much that I actually got artist Kegan McLeod to do a commission for me of this character that Jetley played with the umbrella and everything. Well, you know, an example that comes to my mind is another weapon that shows up pin Hong Kong action films, and that's

the flying guillotine. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's totally in these as well. Yeah, which is kind of like if you haven't you really have to need to look up a clip of it to know what I'm talking about. But it's essentially kind of a bladed ring that's also made into a hat and it's attached to a string and you kind of zip it around the room and try and make it land on your opponent's head and

then you pull, you pull the string to decapitate it. Yeah, it's like the I don't know if there's any realism to that weapon at all, but it's like the vorpal ring, right, because you just instantly kill these people if it works the way it's right, I think it's pretty it's it's pretty clearly established. It's just like a folkloric weapon and a weapon of fiction because it's just far too elaborate and specialized to to really be all that that useful

in a fight. Yeah, but there is a weapon that is very close to that actually, and a lot of people will recognize this weapon from an odd source you would think coming from us. Well, I don't know. I guess I watched a few episodes of this back in the day. But Zena Warrior Princess, Yes, yes, Zeno Warrior Princess stuff, which is itself as spinoff of what Hercules the legendary journeys is that right? I never knew that. I always thought of Zena as being a bigger than

that show. Well, she became bigger because I mean Hercules I think was fun for the time, but Zena became a true pop culture icon absolutely. You know, the strong female character and she's she's engaging in all of these these battles where she's on equal footing or even you know, superior footing against any adversary that darres a poser, and she fought with a sword. But she also had this really cool um sort of halo shaped, ring shaped, bladed

wet weapon called a chakram. Yeah. Yeah, and in fact it's completely based in life and is a real thing. And we did our best to dig up as much research on this as we could because we thought this is such a bizarre weapon. You watched it in that and it shows like that, right, and she throws it around a room like Captain America throws a shield in

it like kills like five people in one throw. Right, just com out completely unrealistic physics and and and a level of expertise with the weapon that just goes beyond what is humanly possible. So you you watch something like that and you think, well, this is this is just pure fantasy. But there is this actual weapon that we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about it in terms of a little bit of mythology, uh, some military history,

and then some aerodynamics. But you have this this chakram or shaker, and it is or sometimes just referred to as a as a chakra, and it is a razor sharp ring of metal designed to they sail through the air and deliver spinning death or at least you know, laceration or mutilation to your adversaries. Yeah, it's so I wish we could like put some JPEGs up for you all right now to try to give you a visual

understanding if you haven't seen one of these before. But it's more like Halo than a disc, right, And we'll give you some pop culture examples other than zena. If you're unfamiliar with that, that maybe will help cement this for you. But it's essentially a death aeroby like if you're familiar with the aerobie the frisbee that has the center cut out of the metal, that's what we're talking about. Imagine one of those, but sharp on the outside. And

there are a couple of different forms. So there was the che car sada and that is the version that was smooth and had a sharp outer layer like on its edge. But there was also the checkr cut of dar and that had a serrated outer edge. And actually, in some of the videos that we watched for this, I noticed that there are a few people who had

the serrated ones. In particular, there was a deo I watched of like there's an actual um Seek weapons master who still practices the same martial arts forms and he was demonstrating how you use these and he had the serrated ones. Yeah, the the serrated one also has I think more of a tie in with with with Hindu mythology as well discussed. But before we get into that, let's let's talk a little bit more about pop culture. Um. Yeah, this seems to be a largely underutilized weapon in fiction,

which is crazy considering how fantastic it is. I think other than Zena, probably the most recognized version that people would know it from is Tron. They had the second one, Tron Legacy. Yeah, not which not that many people actually

went so but but so. Yeah, if you remember in the in Tron movies, they had the disks that they threw around in the discs also like had like what like the information of their personalities on them or yeah, their identity discs or I think sometimes referred to as the discs of Tron as in the old video game. But in Legacy, they would have these like battles where they would like each two people would face off with these things. They throw them around the room, they bounce

off walls, and like eventually strike each other. Right, because it was essentially the Internet, right, you're just heating your identity at other people until somebody perishes. But in the first film it was more of a frisbee, and in the second film it was more of a roby or

essentially a chakram. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there's a couple other examples we have here, mainly from video games, it seems, Yeah, So one key example there is the hat that the Mortal Kombat character Kong Lao wears, and it it's a hat, but it is essentially a chockram, a shockram that's just

kind of been perverted into a hat, I guess. And then he this character has a son in m k X, the most recent uh Mortal Kombat entry, and this uh, this character whose name is Kong Jin, he uses this is one of his weapons, but it's not his signature weapons, so it's not like his character defining weapon. It's like a special thing, like if you hit buttons in the right order, he'll whip one of these others. Yeah, it's

just one of his many special attacks. So I feel like there's there was more potential there that too, to really claim the shock wonder if Zena just like dominated the chakram market, you know, I guess in the way that Wonder Woman. I mean, there are a lot of lassos with characters either you know, it's true. You know, it's kind of like cowboys came and owned it, and so anyone, and of course Wonder Woman. So everyone feels like if they have a lasso, they're just gonna echo

cowboy movies or wonder wold. Yeah, but there is a fascinating uh physics to this weapon too, and I think it's it's actually really interesting when you see it in video game format too, because they have to sort of consider how the physics of the real world, like the math of the real world of throwing essentially a frisbee with blades that somebody would works three dimensional spaces. It's also as well, as we'll discuss when we get into the actual military history of the of the weapon, there's

also a hula hoop element to it. So I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the two thousand five fighting games Sol Caliber three featured a female fighter named Tira who kind of dresses like a circus a performer, and she has a hoop shaped weapon that she uses and it it basically looks like a big hula hoop with blades, and she uses it like that, so it's kind of like an oversized chakram, but she's she's sort of employing it in ways that are reminiscent

of the actual use of this weapon. So the wearing of these is actually based in fact. So uh, some of the ways that it was used was they were either worn over turbans, or they were sometimes worn around the neck, or a warrior would put like, you know, four or six of these across like their shoulder or something like that, so they could carry them into battle and have a bunch of them. Yeah, they're ready to

go because they're they're you know, around your limbs. Now, of course, it's important to note here that there are other hoop shaped weapons or circular weapons uh in various cultures, but they don't necessarily spin. Now, there's some variations of the charuken or throwing star. Uh. You'll find some varieties that have a kind of mini chakram appearance, and likewise uh.

In Chinese marshal art, there's the thing who oh loon, which is uh the this is known as that the wind and fire wheels, and these are circular in um in shape, but they're kind of but they don't spend and you just kind of grip them. They're like giant oversized circular bladed brass knuckles. Okay, And you asked me if there was any superhero comic book examples, and I couldn't think of any off the top of my head. I dug a little bit and the only thing I

could find was Stanley created. Stanley in the last like twenty years has just created a ton of characters so that like different companies can say, like Stanley created such and such, and they do like four issues or whatever, and that's it. So he created this character that's like an Indian superhero named chakra Um and he appears to have I don't think wields these things, but he has like the symbolism of the chockrame, like in his costume and like in his his powers, like circles with sort

of edges to them. And well, that's probably a good jumping off point to begin to get into the sort of mythological power all of the chakram and its use as a mythological weapon, because like like anything in that, you know, goes deep into Hindu mythology, like the thing becomes a symbol, and the symbol becomes an you know, another entity entirely kind of expands outward. Yeah. Absolutely, So it's first mentioned in the ancient Hindu text, the rig Veda,

and in that it's described as glowing. So these are like glowing haloes that are thrown and I think sometimes there's a flaming element to Okay, okay. And then Vishnu, the you know famous figure. Uh, he had one a chok ram that was named sudar Shan chakra, and this means vision of that which is auspicious to do movement. So the weapon itself symbolized clearing of the path of God like there is a there's a strong religious symbolism

to this weapon in the circular nature of it. Yeah, I also referred to as the s Shaanna Chakra, and it's said to have one eight serrated edges around it. Oh, okay, and so that one one oh eight is an important number, that that is a sacred number in in a few different Eastern traditions. Yes, now he It's worth noting that the villain Ravana who kidnaps Sita in the Ramayana, this guy has a boon against the weapon's power, so it's ineffective against him. But Vishnu uses the his chakra to

decapitate a number of different adversaries. So there's Rahu, the the the the ashra that becomes the entity of the eclipse. He uses it against the Kashmiri king Damodara and against the water demon Jallowed Baba. And I found a real fun account of this slang of the water demon in which it said that the Suda Shaanna Chakra quote was so drunk on Johla Babda's blood that he had totally lost control over his senses and was wandering in all

three worlds without knowing what he was doing. But he here being the web weapon itself, because because it's interesting when you start looking at interpretations of this, of this weapon this, and it's worth noting that it is a wonder weapon. It isn't It is one of the ostras, which are these these varying Just think like legendary sentient weapons from dungeons and dragons. That's what you have here. So it's one like the one ring, but much bigger

and you throw it. Yeah, you have a god show up in the God in many cases will have this sacred weapon, and sometimes mortals get to interact with them to varying degrees. But then in the case of Vishnu's weapon, it becomes an entity, becomes anthropomorphized and becomes essentially it

takes human form. Yeah. Well, I'm also thinking you just mentioned that it was connected to a god that is a god of the eclipse, and I'm thinking, like the way that the eclipse can look has a ring formation to it as well, or halo obviously, so that seems to make sense. Symbolism. Yeah, you can see why this would explode through throughout a culture's symbolism and their religious iconography because, I mean, circles are so key to to

most religious traditions. I'm surprised with their recent solar eclipse that more people didn't get into shock rooms. Instead, everybody's got these like cheap sunglasses left over. Now, yeah, where was Aeroby? At least should have jumped in and said, hey, Arooby, where the we're the we're the official um, you know,

recreational item of the eclipse. Yeah, it's perfect. It's easy to you know, to look at the myth here and uh and say, okay, well this is um this is clearly just an elaborate crazy weapon that a Hindu god uses and then zena warrior princess uses it. But surely no, buddy, is it's spinning around a mini hula hoop of death

and using it against their adversaries and realistic combat. Because when you look at at weaponry across human culture, you do tend to see recurring motifs, right like and granted there there are many varieties and variations that take place, but still, like people are killing each other with swords, they're using spears, they're using clubs, they're they're slinging arrows

at each other. Um. So it's it's kind of easy to just on the surface of things think that any weapon that elaborates beyond those basic forms is just something that someone dreamed up because it was fun. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's important to point out here too that the chack ram, at least the way that it was demonstrated in the research that we looked at, can be

thrown in two ways. It can be thrown like a frisbee, obviously, but ideally the way you want to throw it is by spinning it around on your index finger with your finger in the center of the halo, because that's the part that's not sharp. And if you're doing it right, you can let it whip the way you would with like in a roby, and it will go far, quiet and in a straight line. And they the demonstrations I saw this thing like it is designed to cut through

a human limb. Like there they have to quote daft punk or to miss to alter their quote. If you're doing it right, everybody will be bleeding. Ah, very nice, very nice. Yeah. I mean one of the demonstrations I saw this was they they looked at thick bamboo as being analogous to a human limb, and then they tested them against the bamboo and it cut right through. Yes.

I saw some demonstrations with sugarcane, the idea being that sugarcane had the thick had basically the thickness of human bone, and therefore they would if it would cut through that, then it was up to snuff. Yeah. I can't imagine getting hit with one of these. Well, you know, let's take a quick break and when you come back, we will will get more in depth about the military history

of the chakra. Alright, we're back. So, as we've already discussed, we know that the use of chakram's probably dates back to uh, you know, the time of the Hindu epic Mahabarata, because we see we read accounts of its use there now at times either some fantasy and its description like that it's returning like a boomerang uh and and that does not seem to be the case with the chakra

as far as we know. The physics of that are not designed for it, right, you know, the same way again, like good luck throw in Captain America's shield and getting it to bounce back and come to you. Yes, and good luck catching a chakram, right, Yeah, nobody wants to catch a chakra. Yeah. But but but we know that it was used in in Vadic India. And we know this because it it became one of the primary SHOs stars or weapons of the ghatka, which is the seekh

martial art. Okay, Yeah, and that's what I saw demonstrated in these videos with the martial artists who specialized in that form. Yeah. The Sikhs really became the I guess, the masters and the stewards of the chakram even into modern day. Let's actually, let's take a quick tangent and explain Sikhism if just in case there are people in the audience who are vaguely aware of it but don't really understand. You know, why, why would why would this

religion have its own martial art for instance? Yeah, I think this is a great excuse to discuss Sikism a little bit, because Sikhism is a is a major world religion that is really I think under represented and often misunderstood.

People will will see see because there's there are a lot of Seeks living internationally and not just in the you know, the Punjab region of India and uh and and sometimes they are confused with with with Muslims or with with with or people think that they are Hindu or or Buddhist and they don't really understand what what

Sikhism is. Yeah. Absolutely so Again, like I grew up in Southeast Asia, A couple of the kids who went to our school where Seeks, some of our teachers were seek uh And then also like living in the northeast, there was a big Sikh community around the Boston area, and I remember right after nine eleven there was a lot of like consternation because essentially people who didn't know any better assumed Seeks were for some reason Muslim, I guess because they had beards and war turban war turban,

and so there was like violence against the Sikh community. Yeah. So, just to just to lay out the basics, Sikhism is a monotheistic ethno religion that follows the teachings of Guru Nanak. This was a and and Sikism emerged in the Punjab region of northwestern India during the sixteenth century, and it's most notable to outsiders because a Sikh Man carry a

ceremonial sword or dagger Uh, they's called a kurpan. But the chakram also factors into their traditions, sometimes worn and in their turn been or around the turban or in the past on a on a conical turban. Yeah, the warriors had specific turbans that they would wear in conjunction with the shock rams that were more cone like. Yeah. Now, the kurpon the wearing of the of the of the dagger, the sword, that's one of the what's called the five

k's Uh. Each of these are are a practice or tradition that is symbolic of the seek faith, each in its own right. So you have kesh which is uncut hair, cara, a steel bracelet, conga a wooden comb uh, kotsha which is which is essentially a special form of cotton undergarment. And then there is the kirpon the steel sword or dagger. Now, the sword itself, the wearing of the weapon can stand

for a number of different things. Spirituality, the soldier, part of soldier saints, defensive, good defense, of the week, struggle against injustice or a metaphor for God. Now this in a Seek faith. We're not gonna have time to really do a deep dive on it here, but it it basically centers around good works and the leading of a

moral life. And there were ten gurus and all beginning with that that first guru Guru Nanak who founded it, and then you had the final guru, Guru Gobin Singh, who lives sixteen sixty six through seventeen o eight, and he decreed that after he died, the Seek Holy Book, the Guru Grand Sahd would serve as his successor instead of a human being. Interesting, that's very interesting, especially like in light of other religions and sort of uh, you know, viz.

For power Game of Thrones over over religious power. I guess what I really find interesting about this, and especially what you were just saying about the sword, is the cultural symbolism here, right, because both the sword in the Chakram have symbolic meaning that's related to their religion, right, And uh, it's you know, you see this in in some Western forms, but usually in depictions, right, like a coat of arms or something will be the shape of a shield and it might have a sword in it,

but the actual shield and the sword may not actually be symbols related to Christianity, right, Whereas in this their weapons, I'm not going to say that their weapons were specifically designed to be symbols, but rather the other way around. They found out ways for them to symbolically be connected to their beliefs, which made them even more important. Yeah. In fact, the key Sikh icon has does have a

chakram right along with blades. Uh. Yeah, I do want to say that if you want to learn more about about Sikhism and the Sikhs, I highly recommend the BBC Religion page on the topic. And uh it's you can basically do it by doing a search for BBC Religion Sikhism and this page will come up for you. But it's it's in depth and it's laid out in a very consumable fashion. Okay, all right, so let's not miss

the point though, that the chakram was a weapon. It was deployed in battle, and the Sikhs used it in battle for a large portion of their history, so they had they would go into battle with these these iron rings.

Typically there are about twenty centimeters in diameter, and again they had had that sharp outer edge blunt inner edge, and a warrior would go in with as you mentioned earlier, with the shock him around his neck, around his arms, and then you could throw it like a frisbee, but most likely would spin it around a finger and then

sail it into the enemy. In particular, historical accounts indicate that the Sikhs use these weapons in compact against the Moguls, and typically in volley fire at a range of a few dozen meters, so that the Sikh warriors known as the Nahan, would fling the weapons in into the enemy's front lines in order to break up the troops. So you wouldn't be necessarily sending this at a single person, but you just vollowing them into a mass of troops

in order to break them up. Yeah, it doesn't seem to me like there is you know, obviously if anybody's played frisbee before, especially something like ultimate frisbee, right, like, it's not that predictable as to where the disc is conn right well, but you do have more precision over the arobie style and therefore the chockrame style. What's um now to give you some dates to sort of ground this so you have an understanding of when this was used.

The mogul fighting that Robert just mentioned that was seeks fighting against persecution during that period and that was fifteen fifty six to seventeen oh seven, and then it was used again during the Anglo Seek Wars which were eighteen forty five to eighteen forty six, and then again from eighteen forty eight to eighteen forty nine. So that's our

most recent example, that nineteenth century form of it. Now one of the one of the videos we're looking at his research for this because it's it's it's hard to find a lot of hardcore material on the chockrame. I did find a uh an excellent source on on the practices of seek is um the Oxford Handbook of Seek Studies. That was really helpful, as well as as when we get into more of the aerodynamics, I found a book titled Spinning Flight Dynamics of Frisbee's Boomerangs, Um Samaras and

Skipping Stones by Ralph de Lorenz. But we also look to some of these videos that feature Seeks demonstrating their martial art, and one of the points they made is that so many weapons that are thrown or fired any kind of ranged weapon, there's only one point or one part of the weapon that can injure the opponent. So if it's it's like throwing an axe, right, Yeah, if you get the revolution right, yeah, it's going to sink in. Otherwise it's going a less effective portion of the ax

may strike the enemy. But for the chackram, all, all all portions of the of the blade in flight are going to do damage to whatever hits comes in contact with it. Yeah. Absolutely. The example I recall them using was using a throwing knife versus using a shock ram. If you throw a knife, you could hit somebody with a handle and it might not really do all that much damage. If you hit them with a chockram, no matter where it lands, it's gonna hurt. And as you mentioned,

so the symbolism again is still important. In fact, today the Seek holy flag that flies outside of their places of worship portrays the conda, and this is a symbol of the Seeks that features a chokram in its design. And again getting back to that circular thing, it's a circle without a beginning or an end, so it makes

a perfect iconic symbol for the perfection of an eternal God. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we're gonna discuss some of the aerodynamics of the chockram and the and the aerobie and and see what what science has to say about this, uh, this alleged wonder weapon than Alright, we're back. So I just last week and this isn't related to us choosing this as a topic.

Got a toy for my dogs to play within the yard, and you know dogs love frisbees, right, So I went to the pet store and they had this thing that now I realize is essentially a cockram. It's this like plastic sort of in a robie, not plastic rubber um, but it has a halo interior so you can spin it around on your finger. But it's especially great because the dogs like to catch it and then like hold it in the inside of their mouth that that ring um.

And I didn't realize like, you know, throwing it around. Actually it's advertised on the packaging and everything, and it says like, oh, this is this is especially developed so that it flies very easily for dogs, and it's got like this unlike the chock ram or most frisbees has like kind of like a wobbly pattern to it on purpose, and I think it's just for like people like me who aren't that great at throwing frisbees, and it's sort of naturally adjust the aerodynamics for you, so it goes

in more of a straight line than it would. Oh man, this is just making me imagine all of these dogs out there that are being trained, essentially trained to intercept chock rams in midflight. I mean, luckily there are a type of shock rams flying around out there, but I can just imagine it, and it's well, hey, remember our episode on using animals as weapons, and when they used to this as recently as the last century, they would strap bombs to dogs backs and have them climb under

tanks and essentially stand up and and self detonate. You know, So I wouldn't be that surprised if the chock frame came back into style, if they started training dogs to be that, that would be awful. That's like the worst like most graphic thing I can probably imagine is a because you know, I'm a dog lover, well man, you know, like if aliens attack tomorrow and they used disc or chackrame based weapons, the dogs would just jump out there

and and unwittingly sacrifice them themselves. I mean, what if the Predator show The Predator does have a disc weapon? Yeah? Yeah, And you know, it's a good thing that dogs never get uploaded into the Tron universe. So she went on your identity rings. So, but if we're gonna bring it back into the real world. The flying disc obviously dates back to the chockrame, but it was actually popularized by the Wamo company in the Team fifty seven with their

trademark Frisbee Now. Alan Adler then designed the aeroby long distance throwing ring specifically after the chockrame and his added air foiling technology as it's called. Basically, it's added to the rubber and the plastic that are in these rings allows them to go up to two d and fifty meters. Most of us are familiar with these, yeah, I mean, it's it's worth pointing out that the air the Aeroby pro in particular, has held two Guinness World records for

the longest throw of an object without any velocity aiding feature. Wow. Have you ever played frisbee golf before? I have not. It's my my brothers really into it, and so I've gone occasionally to a couple of frisbee golf courses, and you know, like in golf, there's different types of frisbees in the same way there's different types of clubs. And I think listeners correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there might be one of the frisbees that is is like a chockram that has a halo in two.

So you're permitted to use a chockram in like ultimate frisbee frisbee golf. I don't know about ultimate frisbee but I think because frisbee golf, essentially your goal is you try to throw the frisbee so that it lands inside a basket. That's like your version of the golf hole. Yeah. I think one of the key things here to keep in mind, and the the aerobi versus frisbee debate, if you will, there's basically no debate. The aerobe or chockram

design is aerodynamically superior. And that's one of the beauties of this is that that in ancient India they perfected this form long long before anyone was interested in just throwing them around, long before they had rubber available to them. Right, Um, So, how did the physics of this whole thing work. Right, You're probably saying, Hey, this is a science podcast, you guys can actually talk about the science of this thing. Yes, we will here it is. So if you think of

it this way, a flying disc is an axe symmetric wing. Okay, So it's one wing that's symmetrical with an elliptical cross section, and the lift of the body is what's important here. Right. There's a lot of math involved in this, in the physics behind it, and I don't think it would probably not be fun to listen on a podcast to me just spell out equations for you. So I'm gonna deter from that. But what determines the lift is the cross

sectional area working together with the disks density. So this is its free stream velocity and a constant of its shape and its angle. Okay, now we all anybody who's throwing a frisbee basically understands this, right, Like how heavy the thing is, how dense the thing is versus like the angle that you throw it at, and then probably like what the conditions are in the air, right, So how does it stay stable? Well, the center of pressure due to the lift is offset by gravity, so gravity

is obviously another function here. So if you just simply threw it right, imagine and we've all done this as little kids. You take a frisbee and you don't even try to throw it like the way that a disc would go. You just like huck it and the lift causes it to up over backwards. When you do something like that, the spin itself of the disk is key to keeping the gyroscopic stability and speed of these things, and this is something that the warriors who used the

chockrame figured out. Now, the mass of the disk is also going to affect this as well. Right, we were talking about density before, but also just it's mass, a greater inertia will also increase his stability. So the heart you throw it essentially right, those more stable it could

potentially be. Now in the case of the frisbee, the disc having a what is called a viscous no slip condition also contributes to the vorticity right the way that it's spins, So part of the whole, like rubber design uh is built into that to to contribute to that. When you look at the chockram, I think it's pretty similar, right, Like I was watching one of those um Man at Arms reforged videos where they like actually made Zena's chockrame

and they were test throwing them. But while they were forging them, they were making sure that it was as flat as possible, as smooth as possible. They spent a lot of time on a grinder making sure that the shape worked well so that it would be it would throw and have this vorticity. So the circulation about the disk itself and the flow of the air that moves past it causes a force that determines its angular momentum. And this is attributed to something that's called the Magnus effect.

And essentially this is caused by one side of the disk perceiving a higher free stream velocity than the other, which causes a pressure gradient. So you know, one side of the disk basically has like the the air going kind of over it. Uh, it's interesting. Like again, this would be another point where it would be nice if we had graphics on a podcast. But if you see charts of this, it shows you just how the air

is kind of moving around the object itself. For instance, here's an example, when you throw a frisbee clockwise, it tends to veer to the left right. It's the same effect that causes a ping pong ball to travel along a curved path when a player puts a spin on it with their paddle. You know, like if you're real into ping pong and you know how to do the spin, uh, it's the whole It's the same thing essentially, so it allows it to to move in a particular direction. Now,

some of us do this unintentionally, myself included. This goes back to that dog toy was talking about. We're also

just you know, human and child toys. I feel like this this effect of throwing a frisbee is one of the reason that many attempts to play with frisbees and like a few throws in because you're like, through the frisbee, it should be fun, but it's over there now yeah yeah right, Like that's inevitably I'll throw it and it lands nowhere near the person who's supposed to catch it, and they're just like, come on, what are you doing? Um now. Frisbees also used the discs rim and the

top ridges on it to improve these effects. So you know, remember like the molding on on the frisbees we use as kids that would have kind of like those those actually they're almost like serrations right, Um, but the ockram doesn't have these. The chockram is essentially flat. Now, in the case of the chockrame, its shape allows it to hold a stable position for relatively long distances. Now, in fact, it is actually more efficient than a frisbee, exactly like

what Robert said, you can throw these things further. And one thing that's key to these is the design of the chockrame is designed to make it silent, to like, you don't want people to hear this thing necessarily, Yeah, the first thing they're going to hear or the screams of it cutting into your right. It's not like with Zeno where she does that like weird yelping how right

before she throws it Amazonian kind of war cry. So to try and um, you know, summarize and also maybe just add a little bit uh more to our discussion of a very dynamics here. So the chockrame aerobie design

is going to minimize torque. It's gonna fly straight without rolling, and it requires very little angle of attack and works with the near a horizontal throw and as Ralph Delrenz points out in that book, spinning flight, which I definitely recommend for anyone wants a deeper dive in all of this, he writes at the chockram quote exploits the stability of a spinning ring with the aerodynamic performance of a flat plate.

So it's circumvents the frisbee or the flying discs. Main aerodynamic problem forward center lift and the resultant pitch up moment with increased range. You know what, I just remembered another pop culture example. It's not a shockram, it's more like a frisbee. Do you remember in the Dark Tower books they meet that tribe of women who throw plates. They're like steel plates, and they come up with this martial arts form where they throw them as uh like

cutting weapons. Three is this the waistline? It's Wolves of the co That one was more recent. I can't believe it. And then like Susannah learns how to perfect this. There's this amazing drawing in the book of her in her wheelchair throwing a bunch of these at a wall and they're all like sticking into the wall. I forgot all about that, And just now I remember the flying death spares. Uh that, but but not anything else. Okay, Well, there's

a there's another example of a flying discs. I do love it when they're they're utilized well, uh in a fictional property, But but more often than not, they're gonna be frisbee shaped as opposed to chockrame shape, it seems. So. Now we're talking about aerodynamics here, so I imagine some people were wondering, well, how about how about chockrame based aircraft, especially given that we just recently talked about alien abduction for two episodes in the show. Most UFOs are reportedly

disc shaped. Yeah, they're talking about spinning disks and and if you're into this sort of thing, there are those who who point back to a lot of different elements of the wonder weapons utilized in Hindu mythology and say, oh, well, clearly this is a UFO, this is a nuclear weapon, etcetera. It's interesting. I mean, I don't buy into it, but it's it's kind of a fun exercise that sounds like some three eyed Ravens stuff there. Yeah, probably so uh uh.

So I did some digging around, and while there are some wonderful examples of disc shaped aircraft designs, there's not really anything in the way of true chockrame style aircraft. So you have, for instance, there's the the l RV, the Lenticular Reentry Vehicle, which was a US Cold War era nuclear warhead delivery system that probably never actually flew, and it it kind of looked like a flying saucer, and that's one of the reasons that that certain communities

are really into talking about them. But yeah, this particular aircraft may have not even have flown, and it certainly didn't spin around in circles. Um other flying disc aircraft also looked similar to the chockrame, but they basically relegated the center of the disc to engine or a cockpit, and in any event, these didn't spin either. You had the uh the Avro Canada VC nine Avro Car, which is a vertical takeoff design, but there were thrust in

stability problems with it. During World War Two, the Luftwaffe had the sack A S six prototype circular wing aircraft, and also during the Second World War, the U. S. Navy experimented with the Void x F five you or flying Flapjack, which was a fun looking design with like a circular wing array, but as it turns out, it

didn't actually fly. It just kind of hopped and therefore was failure there's actually a fun a thesis that I ran across from one chew for Hanna Hassan, and he's a mechanical is or was a mechanical engineering student at the National University of Singapore, and he took inspiration from the chockram in designing a drone and even build a functional prototype. So I'll try and include a link to his website that has his thesis in a video of

this chockram based drone flying. But I think it's interesting because maybe we just haven't reached the point in in techno, in technological achievement where we're going to have like functional chockram flying vehicles or flying drones well the way, Okay,

So I'm trying to think about it. Uh And obviously I'm not an engineer, so forgive me out there, but I'm trying to think about it from the perspective of designing something that flies like a chockram but is stable enough for a pilot, right, And I think the problem would be that your pilot would be getting spun around and would just completely you know, be unable to pilot such a such a device if it was moving with

that kind of spin. So you've got to find out a way to keep the center from spinning while the actual ship itself has these I guess exterior halo discs

that spin around that allows it to move. The closest thing that I can think of in one of the old old in one of the prequel Star Wars movies, I think, didn't Obi Wan Kenobi have like a spaceship that had like a an exterior ring kind of thing, and then like the actual pod was in the middle, but the rings didn't move around, they didn't actually spin. This is interesting, you know, I'm I'm beginning to wonder

this might be a whole future episode for us. But you have all these accounts of alleged UFOs that we're spinning, and certainly we've talked about the use of spinning spacecraft as a as a means of potentially creating a suitable amount of artificial gravity. But I don't recall ever running across any arguments as to why a UFO would be spinning,

Like what is it? Is it somehow supposed to uh, you know, provide it's it's acceleration, or is it maintaining an internal environment, or is it just like the circular spinning disk is such a like pervasive symbol throughout all cultures. It's universal, right that, It's like it's pretty easy to ground that as like a ship design. And yet again I can't really think other than like you know, X files, spaceships or something like that. I can't really think of

any even and fictional examples of this working. Yeah, not not off hand, but hey, maybe listeners out there can can provide us with some examples. Yeah, totally. So if you want to write into us, tell us maybe something that you know about this fabulous weapon that we missed, or tell us, you know some aerodynamics information on how the disc shape could contribute to an actual flying vehicle.

You can reach out to us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram, and in fact, we also have our Facebook discussion module right now which is running hot. There are some great conversations going on in there. I want to thank everybody who's listening that is in there contributing. It's really turning into its own little community, people talking about stuff not even uh necessarily related to the podcast, but our potential topics that we would talk about,

and having conversations amongst themselves. Yeah. Yeah, by all means jump in and join the conversation there and and do let us know if there are some any great shot ram based fight sequences in films that we're just not aware of. Particularly, I know I'm not that well versed in in Hindi films, and I know there's some phenomenal

action sequences that do pop up. Surely there must be some kind of Bollywood film in which these are used, you think, yeah, or or perhaps they've popped up in Hong Kong cinema into some entry that I'm not familiar with because there's so many different elaborate weapons. Granted, most of which are are based in in Chinese traditions. But you know, sometimes you just need to add some spark to your fight sequences and incorporate something new. Right, that's right,

it's true. And hey, another way you can contact us, the old fashioned simple way. Reach out to us on email at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com