The Aerobie Throw

On Saturday Mom, Dad, Greg and Katelyn came up to our house for supper. It was sunny, 60+ degrees, and windy that day, and Annika was out earlier throwing my two Aerobies around (those rings made of plastic that fly really far). Later, while the ladies were shopping, the rest of us were outside again. Dad was pushing the girls on the swings while Greg and I threw the big pink Aerobie around. At one point it went off course and landed by the swingset, and Dad casually tossed it back to Greg. The wind caught it and it eventually stopped moving in our neighbors' neighbors' yard. Greg tracked it down and then gave it a moderate toss. It caught the wind just right, flew straight and true, and I nearly caught it, but it went really far. As a quantitative kind of guy, I really wondered how far it had gone. So...I went to globexplorer.com and found the overhead satellite shot of our neighborhood. Knowing the dimensions of our lot, I established a scale for the photo and then measured the length of Greg's throw. The result: approximately 400 feet. That's a long way. The world record, on the other hand, is 406 meters.