Modern Use
Today, boomerangs are mostly used as sporting items. There are different types of throwing contests: accuracy of return; Aussie round; trick catch; maximum time aloft; fast catch; and endurance (see below). The modern sport boomerang (often referred to as a 'boom' or 'rang'), is made of Finnish birch plywood, hardwood, plastic or composite materials and comes in many different shapes and colours. Most sport boomerangs typically weigh less than 100 grams (3.5 oz), with MTA boomerangs (boomerangs used for the maximum time aloft event) often under 25 grams (0.9 oz).
Boomerangs have also been suggested as an alternative to clay pigeons in shotgun sports, where the flight of the boomerang better mimics the flight of a bird offering a more challenging target.
The modern boomerang is often CAD designed with precision airfoils. The number of "wings" is often more than 2 as more lift is provided by 3 or 4 wings than by 2.
In 1992 German Astronaut Ulf Merbold performed an experiment aboard Spacelab that established that boomerangs function in zero gravity as they do on Earth. French Astronaut Jean-François Clervoy aboard MIR in repeated this in 1997. In 2008, Japanese astronaut Takao Doi again repeated the experiment.
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