THE VIDEO SHELF · magnus effect
Backspin Basketball Flies Off Dam
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.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN uses it as a quick, clear demonstration of the Magnus effect behind spinning-cylinder ships and planes.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Veritasium
- Topic
- magnus effect
- Format
- demo
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 3
- HN mentions in dataset
- 5
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2015–2021
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
There's a decent video by Veritasium about the Magnus Effect, where the bomb is essentially given lift by its backspin: [VIDEO]
sndean on Hacker News · 2016-11
In Bouncing bombThere'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]
pqdbr on Hacker News · 2020-12
In Rotating Sails Help to Revive Wind-Powered ShippingI'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 …
krisoft on Hacker News · 2021-05
In How to design a sailing ship for the 21st century?
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.