This dual biography starts with a popcorn can lid tossed after Thanksgiving dinner in 1937 and a stranger on a Los Angeles beach offering Walter Frederick Morrison 25 cents for a five-cent cake pan. Morrison went on to fly P-47 Thunderbolts in World War II, survive time as a prisoner of war, and return with a working understanding of lift and drag that he applied to the Whirlo-Way, later renamed the Flying Saucer to ride the UFO craze, and finally the plastic Pluto Platter of 1955.

After Wham-O bought the rights in 1957 and borrowed the name from Yale students shouting Frisbie over flying pie tins, Ed Headrick arrived in 1964 and redesigned the disc with a thicker rim and the concentric ridges now called the Rings of Headrick. We break down why a disc needs spin to avoid flipping, how the Robins-Magnus force makes it curve, why the ridges w ...