Like many sports that feature balls, spin plays a big role in tennis. By imparting a topspin or backspin to a tennis ball, players can alter the ball’s trajectory after Keep reading
Tag: magnus effect
Paris 2024: Bouncing and Spinning
Spin, or the lack thereof, plays a major role in many sports — including tennis, golf, football, baseball, volleyball, and table tennis — because it affects whether flow stays attached Keep reading
Tokyo 2020: Baseball Aerodynamics
For a long time, people thought baseball aerodynamics were simply a competition between gravity and the Magnus effect caused when a ball is spinning. But the seams of a baseball Keep reading
Tokyo 2020: Visualizing the Magnus Effect in Golf
Golf returned to the Olympics in 2016 in Rio and is back for the Tokyo edition. Golf balls — with their turbulence-promoting dimples — are a perennial favorite for aerodynamics Keep reading
Skipping Stone Physics
Skipping stones across water has fascinated humans for millennia, but incredibly, we’re still uncovering the physics of this game today. A recent paper built and experimentally validated a mathematical model Keep reading
Living Fluid Dynamics
This short film for the 2016 Gallery of Fluid Motion features Montana State University students experiencing fluid dynamics in the classroom and in their daily lives. As in her previous Keep reading
Rio 2016: Table Tennis
Many sports use spherical balls, but the small size and weight of a table tennis ball makes it the one where aerodynamics have the strongest effect. Spin also plays a Keep reading
Daily Fluids, Part 2
We play with fluid dynamics all the time, though we don’t always think of it as such. Here are a few ways it shows up in the ways we play: Keep reading
The Reverse Magnus Effect
A good soccer player can kick the ball from the corner of the field into the goal thanks to the Magnus effect. But if you’ve ever tried to play soccer Keep reading
Magnus Effect
Putting a little bit of spin on an object can have a big aerodynamic effect, thanks to the Magnus effect. As demonstrated in the video above, backspin on a basketball Keep reading