Veritasium
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2015–2021
3:01 · 61M views · Jul 15, 2015
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.
HN uses it as a quick, clear demonstration of the Magnus effect behind spinning-cylinder ships and planes.
5 comments from Hacker News
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: this video This wikipedia page has a way better summary than my attempt above: [LINK]
There's a great Veritasium video explaining the Magnus effect and the Flettner rotor here: this video The Norsepower company (which installs Flettner rotors on ships) also has a short video explaining the effect here [LINK]
There's a decent video by Veritasium about the Magnus Effect, where the bomb is essentially given lift by its backspin: this video
My favorite is the Flettner aeroplane since it uses the Magnus effect [1][2] as it generates lift without a wing. Screenshot linked in the original post [3]. [1] [LINK] [2] this video [3] [LINK]
This is the video they reference at the end that elaborates and shows off the use in ships, as well as some planes that have spinning cylinders instead of wings: this video