Drop a basketball with backspin from a great enough height, and something rather interesting happens. In the video below, Veritasium’s Derek Muller explains the Magnus effect, and why the phenomenon ...

Typically when we think of backspin, we think of trick shots in basketball and advanced moves in tennis. But there is more to backspin than meets the eye. Simply dropped, the ball falls more or less ...

Not too long ago, we showed you a video of the Magnus effect putting a strange twist to the way a basketball was pulled down to the Earth by gravity. The physics involved with the rough surface of the ...

This wing, though, is not a traditional foil shape typically found on aircraft. It uses the Magnus effect to generate lift. Briefly, the Magnus effect is when lift is generated from a spinning object ...

There's this cool thing called the "Magnus Effect" that causes strange things to happen when you put a spin on things in the middle of free-fall. As a demonstration of the effect, a basketball was ...