Backspin Basketball Flies Off Dam

Veritasium · 61.1M views · 2015-07-15 · 3:01

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Overview

A short Veritasium video showing how far a backspinning basketball would travel dropped off a dam. It demonstrates the Magnus effect and links to Flettner rotor ships and aircraft.

On Hacker News

HN uses it as a quick, clear demonstration of the Magnus effect behind spinning-cylinder ships and planes.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2015–2021

Topics

Everyday physics & science demos Fundamental physics

What people said

krisoft · 2021-05 · Recommendation
I'm not an expert on it really. They rotate the giant cylinder and the wind is blowing by. The rotation forms a low pressure zone one side of the cylinder which acts as a lift force perpendicular both to the rotational axis of the cylinder and the wind. It's the same effect which "turns" a soccer ball if you kick it with a spin. There is a really nice demonstration of the effect in this video: [VIDEO] This wikipedia page has a way better summary than my attempt above: [LINK]
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pqdbr · 2020-12 · Recommendation
There's a great Veritasium video explaining the Magnus effect and the Flettner rotor here: [VIDEO] The Norsepower company (which installs Flettner rotors on ships) also has a short video explaining the effect here [LINK]
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sndean · 2016-11 · Recommendation
There's a decent video by Veritasium about the Magnus Effect, where the bomb is essentially given lift by its backspin: [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Veritasium, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

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