We’ve all been there – you lob a frisbee to your friend just for it to crash right in the centre of a nearby picnic. Scientists may have found a way to help you avoid that embarrassment, discovering the optimal way to hold a disc for the best performance.
Researchers at Berry College, Georgia, investigated professional and amateur disc golf players (yes… that’s a real sport) to explore the effect different thumb positions had on disc throwing.
The study, published in AIP Advances, revealed the optimum thumb position to achieve the fastest launch and spin rate is around three centimetres from the disc’s outer edge.
“The 3cm position is a sensible starting point for amateur players who might be unsure of where to place their thumb,” said Dr Zachary Lindsey, the study’s lead author.
Disc Golf, a sport in which players throw discs towards a metal basket, was first played in the USA in the 1960s. It was officially formalised in 1976 by Ed Headrick, who of course, as we all know, is the father of the modern frisbee.
Today, the Professional Disc Golf Association has nearly 108,000 players from 40 countries.
To reveal a key technique to improve a player’s skill, Lindsey’s team studied the speed and rotation of discs thrown by 24 players using small sensors. Each player performed 5 throws for 5 different thumb grips, ranging from 9.4cm to 2.61cm from the disc’s centre.
This resulted in an impressive total of 600 throws. This data showed that those with higher spin rates also had faster launch speeds.
A frisbee’s spin also improves the stability and length of a disc’s flight, according to a 2020 study in the European Journal of Applied Physics, which also revealed how physicists kept busy during lockdown. The faster the spin, the longer the flight and the faster the launch.
The team found that the fastest launch and highest spin rates were achieved when the thumb was furthest from the centre, at that 3cm sweet spot.
Scientists hope this study will lead to more research, including studies on whether the 3cm works for all frisbee sizes. It’s not like researchers have anything else to do, right?
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