TASMANIA, July 17 — This clip from Veritasium shows Australian trick basketball team How Ridiculous dropping a basketball from a height of 415 feet — about the equivalent of a 38-storey building — off Tasmania’s Gordon Dam to illustrate what’s known as the Magnus effect.
As Veritasium’s Derek Muller explains, the reason for the basketball’s flight of fancy is the Magnus effect, described by Heinrich Gustav Magnus in 1852, though Isaac Newton had observed the same phenomenon almost 200 years before.
The Magnus effect affects all rotating objects moving through the air and is related directly to Bernouli’s principle, which states that the faster a fluid moves, the less pressure it exerts (to put it simply). That’s how the spin of the ball and the air around it can cause movements that almost look unreal.
The Magnus effect can also help explain those amazing football kicks from David Beckham and the curveball, among other things.
