which is a hundred and twenty-six and a half meters or four hundred and fifteen feet high.

then they drop a basketball over the edge.

you can see that the basketball get pushed around a bit by the breeze.

but it lands basically right below where it was dropped.

Now watch what happens when they drop another basketball.

This time with a bit back spin.

wow! where will it go? hahaha (It's incredible!)

So you want us to get back in the water, do you?

This is Brad who just threw it.

I literally just dropped it with a bit spin like I didn't even throw it.

and I just took off. I have no idea that I'm gonna do that.

And this is where I come in. The basketball with subject to the magnus effect

which affects all rotating balls are cylinders as they fly into the air

and it works like this.

as the basketball picks up speed, air on the front side of the ball is going in same direction as it's been.

and therefore it gets dragged along with the ball and deflected back.

Air on the other side is moving opposite to the ball spin

so the flow separate from the ball instead getting deflected.

The net result is the ball pushes air one way so the air applies in equal force in a ball the other way.

and this is known as the Magnus effect named after Heinrich Gustav Magnus who described it in 1852

of course Isaac Newton beat him to it by nearly two hundred years describing the flight of tennis balls at Cambridge College

but you know he's got enough stuff named after him.

This effect is very important in sports like tennis, soccer and golf

but could it have non-sport applications?

Perhaps this is a sailboat. I know it doesn't look like a sailboat but those aren't chimneys

they are spinning cylinders called flettner-rotors and they take the place of the sails.

They deflect crosswinds using the Magnus effect to propel the ship forwards

In this, it's a plane with spinning cylinders instead of wings

using the Magnus effect the cylinders actually generate more lift than traditional wings

however they also generate way more drag making them impractical.

this plane only flew once and then it crashed

but a man is in fact is making a comeback

here's an experimental rotor wing aircraft which generates all its lift from spinning cylinders

and this is the E-ship 1 which uses four spinning cylinders that is four flettner rotors

to increase its efficiency and reduce the amount of diesel

so in the future, the Magnus effect may help more than just basketballs' fly.

Oh, where will it go?