September 5, 2017 • 44 mins
It’s easy to assume that spinning, ring-shaped blades are weapons best left to Hindu gods and TV warrior princesses. But long before humans invented the peaceful Aerobie, ancient Indian warriors unleashed spinning chakram against their enemies -- and Sikh warriors continued to use them in combat up into the 19th century. Join Robert and Christian as they explore the mythic power, military history and aerodynamics of this marvelous flying halo.
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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
(01:09):
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
(01:30):
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,
(01:53):
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
(02:13):
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
(02:34):
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,
(02:56):
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
(03:20):
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
(03:43):
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
(04:06):
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
(04:26):
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,
(04:50):
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
(05:12):
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
(05:33):
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,
(05:53):
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
(06:13):
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
(06:35):
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.
(06:57):
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
(07:20):
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,
(07:42):
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
(08:05):
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
(08:25):
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
(08:47):
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
(09:08):
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
(09:31):
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,
(09:52):
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.
(10:14):
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
(10:35):
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
(10:58):
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,
(11:21):
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
(11:43):
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
(12:04):
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
(12:24):
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
(12:46):
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
(13:06):
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
(13:27):
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
(13:48):
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
(14:10):
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
(14:32):
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
(14:55):
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
(15:15):
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
(15:37):
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
(15:58):
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
(16:21):
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
(16:44):
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,
(17:10):
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
(17:31):
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
(17:53):
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
(18:14):
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.
(18:37):
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
(18:59):
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
(19:21):
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
(19:42):
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
(20:03):
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,
(20:27):
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
(20:49):
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,
(21:11):
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
(21:31):
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,
(21:53):
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
(22:14):
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
(22:37):
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
(23:00):
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,
(23:21):
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
(23:42):
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,
(24:06):
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
(24:28):
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
(24:51):
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
(25:12):
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
(25:33):
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
(25:55):
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
(26:17):
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
(26:37):
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
(26:58):
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.
(27:19):
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
(27:41):
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
(28:01):
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
(28:22):
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,
(28:42):
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
(29:06):
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
(29:28):
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
(29:49):
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.
(30:13):
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
(30:34):
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,
(30:58):
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
(31:19):
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
(31:41):
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
(32:02):
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
(32:25):
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.
(32:47):
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
(33:08):
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
(33:29):
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,
(33:52):
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
(34:13):
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,
(34:34):
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
(34:54):
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
(35:18):
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
(35:40):
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
(36:00):
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
(36:21):
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
(36:42):
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.
(37:02):
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,
(37:25):
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.
(37:49):
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.
(38:12):
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
(38:33):
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
(38:56):
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
(39:19):
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
(39:41):
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
(40:02):
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
(40:24):
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
(40:45):
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
(41:08):
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,
(41:31):
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
(41:51):
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
(42:11):
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
(42:34):
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
(42:55):
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,
(43:18):
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,
(43:40):
the old fashioned simple way. Reach out to us on
email at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot
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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
(01:09):
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
(01:30):
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,
(01:53):
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
(02:13):
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
(02:34):
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,
(02:56):
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
(03:20):
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
(03:43):
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
(04:06):
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
(04:26):
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,
(04:50):
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
(05:12):
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
(05:33):
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,
(05:53):
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
(06:13):
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
(06:35):
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.
(06:57):
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
(07:20):
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,
(07:42):
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
(08:05):
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
(08:25):
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
(08:47):
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
(09:08):
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
(09:31):
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,
(09:52):
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.
(10:14):
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
(10:35):
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
(10:58):
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,
(11:21):
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
(11:43):
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
(12:04):
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
(12:24):
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
(12:46):
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
(13:06):
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
(13:27):
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
(13:48):
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
(14:10):
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
(14:32):
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
(14:55):
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
(15:15):
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
(15:37):
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
(15:58):
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
(16:21):
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
(16:44):
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,
(17:10):
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
(17:31):
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
(17:53):
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
(18:14):
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.
(18:37):
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
(18:59):
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
(19:21):
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
(19:42):
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
(20:03):
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,
(20:27):
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
(20:49):
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,
(21:11):
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
(21:31):
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,
(21:53):
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
(22:14):
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
(22:37):
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
(23:00):
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,
(23:21):
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
(23:42):
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,
(24:06):
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
(24:28):
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
(24:51):
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
(25:12):
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
(25:33):
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
(25:55):
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
(26:17):
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
(26:37):
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
(26:58):
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.
(27:19):
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
(27:41):
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
(28:01):
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
(28:22):
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,
(28:42):
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
(29:06):
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
(29:28):
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
(29:49):
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.
(30:13):
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
(30:34):
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,
(30:58):
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
(31:19):
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
(31:41):
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
(32:02):
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
(32:25):
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.
(32:47):
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
(33:08):
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
(33:29):
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,
(33:52):
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
(34:13):
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,
(34:34):
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
(34:54):
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
(35:18):
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
(35:40):
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
(36:00):
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
(36:21):
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
(36:42):
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.
(37:02):
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,
(37:25):
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.
(37:49):
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.
(38:12):
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
(38:33):
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
(38:56):
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
(39:19):
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
(39:41):
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
(40:02):
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
(40:24):
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
(40:45):
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
(41:08):
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,
(41:31):
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
(41:51):
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
(42:11):
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
(42:34):
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
(42:55):
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,
(43:18):
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,
(43:40):
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
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