They threw the ball from a 127-meter-tall dam.
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The following step that researchers have made was to spin the ball while releasing it, without enacting any pressure on it. The basketball did not fall into the dam, but moved forward and at a certain point began flying parallel to the water.
Heinrich Gustav Magnus, a brilliant scientist working out of the University of Berlin in the 1800s, in one of the world’s best laboratories at the time, discovered the physical behaviour while studying firearms and projectiles.
A video showing how the Magnus effect is applied to a basketball with backspin has gone viral with more than 5.8 million views on YouTube since it was posted Wednesday.
However, it is completely counter-intuitive and fun to try and understand. The ball sways a little but ultimately stays in a downward path.
It happened because of the Magnus effect, which happens on balls and cylinders when the thrower adds a bit of spin. As the video informs us, it’s due to something called the Magnus effect. “As the basketball picks up speed, air on the front side of the ball is going the same direction as its spin, and therefore it gets dragged along with the ball and deflected back”, said experts. So instead of getting deflected, the flow separates from the ball.
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(The Magnus effect has to do with the physics of curve balls in soccer, too.).
