Incredible Basketball Trick Shot Shows How The Magnus Effect Works

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.

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. Veritasium’s Derek Muller said the ball movement and subsequent flight happened because of something called the Magnus effect.

“The Magnus effect… affects all rotating balls or cylinders as they fly through the air”, the video explains.

As Veritasium makes clear, there are some curious practical applications of the Magnus effect, including Flettner ships that use spinning rotors to move through the water.

This isn’t the only cool basketball video shot from atop the Gordon Dam. Firstly, they threw the ball in a straight direction. However, if you put some spin on it and then drop it, the basketball will fall for a bit before taking off horizontally and flying in another direction. Quite the opposite, the air acts as a propelling force allowing the ball to move on longer distances. The finding is expected to trigger lots of interest on behalf of sport practitioners as it can help improve their techniques.