YouTuber Won $10,000 Bet With a Physicist Over Wind-Powered Vehicle (businessinsider.com) 200
Derek Muller, creator of the science-themed YouTube channel Veritasium, won a $10,000 bet with UCLA physics professor Alexander Kusenko, who claimed that Muller's wind-driven land yacht couldn't travel faster than the wind without any additional power sources. After recruiting science stars Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye to help settle the debate, the professor eventually conceded that it was in fact possible. Insider reports: Created by Rick Cavallaro, a former aerospace engineer, Blackbird is unique because it can move directly downwind faster than the wind itself for a sustained period. Any sailor worth their salt can tell you that a boat can travel faster than the wind by cutting zigzag patterns; that's called tacking. But the idea that a vehicle can beat the breeze traveling straight downwind, no tacking involved, is controversial. "I knew this was a counterintuitive problem. To be perfectly honest with you, when I went out to pilot the craft, I didn't understand how it worked," Muller told Insider.
Blackbird is so counterintuitive, in fact, that less than a week after Muller released his video (below), Alexander Kusenko, a professor of physics at UCLA, emailed to inform him that it had to be wrong. A vehicle like that would break the laws of physics, Kusenko said. "I said, 'Look, if you don't believe this, let's put some money on this,'" Muller said. He suggested a wager of $10,000, never imagining Kusenko would take it. But Kusenko agreed, and in the weeks that followed, they exchanged data and argued about Blackbird. They even brought in several of science's biggest names, including Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, to help decide who was right. In the end, Muller emerged victorious.
Blackbird is so counterintuitive, in fact, that less than a week after Muller released his video (below), Alexander Kusenko, a professor of physics at UCLA, emailed to inform him that it had to be wrong. A vehicle like that would break the laws of physics, Kusenko said. "I said, 'Look, if you don't believe this, let's put some money on this,'" Muller said. He suggested a wager of $10,000, never imagining Kusenko would take it. But Kusenko agreed, and in the weeks that followed, they exchanged data and argued about Blackbird. They even brought in several of science's biggest names, including Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, to help decide who was right. In the end, Muller emerged victorious.
Fresh news? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Fresh news? (Score:2)
Re:Fresh news? (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember this happening a couple of weeks back.. or has he won an additional 10000$?
Very fresh, only a couple of weeks behind is batting above the average here in Slashdot.
Re:Fresh news [or a stale submission]? (Score:3)
In general I think the Slashdot editors should be defended for their work, but this is a story that makes it hard... Maybe there was a reason that it languished in the submission queue for so long? Something about the actual definition of "tacking" that might have been more familiar to the other editors of Slashdot?
Disclaimer: I am NOT a sailor, but my fuzzy recollection is that you can't go faster than the wind running before it, but I believe there are conditions when you are running at certain angles to
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He actually won $10,000, not '10000$'. I'm %100 sure of that.
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In Quebec the french form for ten thousand dollars is 10 000 $
and for a dollar fifty it's 1,50 $
Yeah, confusing
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and the French form for one point five is of course 1.5, so maybe it's not so confusing after all.
( except in French we always write the French word for French without a capital )
Back to the future (Score:5, Informative)
This was a thing last decade, that guy should get some Venture capital, for betting !!!
From Discovery channel in 2010,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Back to the future (Score:5, Informative)
It was also on Slashdot on the 6th of November, 2010: https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org] :)
One of the few Slashdot stories I still clearly remember
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Why this works (Score:2)
My explanation:
We all agree that a windmill can extract power from the wind-- we see that every day!
Separately, we agree that, with sufficient power, a vehicle can be propelled at speeds faster than the wind-- we see this every day as well!
If we hooked up the windmill to the vehicle (for example, using electricity), we could easily power a vehicle faster than the wind using that same wind. For instance, if we had a 1KW wind turbine, and that was powering an electric bicycle, you could easily get up to 30mph
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I'm not denying it works but consider the counter example, the windmill is mounted on a truck that is driving downwind at exactly the same speed as the wind is going. How can the windmill generate any power at all?
The only way I can see that you can cross this barrier is for you to accelerate to the wind speed, the wind to slow down slightly so you're now going faster than the wind (and can start to extract energy again) and then the wind picks up again and you can accelerate some more.
ISTR it was demonstra
Re:Why this works (Score:5, Informative)
You should not think of this thing as a windmill. It is not. It's a propeller like in an airplane. The wheels power the propeller.
Then why does it move at all, if the windmill is not what is extracting the power? Simple. Anything you put in the wind will start moving. With an ideal 0-friction, anything you put in the wind will accelerate until it moves at the same speed as the wind. Now blow backwards into the wind, and you'll move faster than the wind!
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Thanks. That makes sense.
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This isn't correct.
The windmill, if coupled directly to the ground, *is* generating power, even when the truck or whatever is going the speed of the wind downwind because the wind is still moving relative to the ground.
There is a lot less efficiency, because the windmill is having lots of drag, etc. but that doesn't change the fact that the difference between the windspeed relative to the ground is generating power which is then being used to move the vehicle (in this case mechanically).
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This isn't correct.
The windmill, if coupled directly to the ground, *is* generating power, even when the truck or whatever is going the speed of the wind downwind because the wind is still moving relative to the ground.
There is a lot less efficiency, because the windmill is having lots of drag, etc. but that doesn't change the fact that the difference between the windspeed relative to the ground is generating power which is then being used to move the vehicle (in this case mechanically).
You are right, but that isn't how this works; it's an explanation for a different vehicle. The power is transferred from the wheels to the fan and the fan is pushing the vehicle along. I know it's a sin here on Slashdot, but you need to actually watch the video to the end.
A key thought, that might help, is that if you turned this vehicle back to front and tried to go upwind, it would go backwards and would still (in principle, if you could control it right) go faster than the wind downwind. Another key t
Re:Why this works (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a bunch of other videos, by the way-- Rick has talked about this since at least 2000, if not before.
This is definitely how it works, but if if the explanation isn't making sense then *shrug*. The great thing about physics is that you can explain the thing different ways or in different reference frames and it is still the same thing.
Here is another example for you:
A sailboat without a keel can only go windspeed because the energy captured is based on the difference in the speed of the boat vs the wind. When the boat is at windspeed, no more energy can be captured.
A sailboat with a keel can go faster than the wind because it can react the wind against the water under the boat.
A windmill in a pickup truck where the windmill isn't directly coupled to the ground via gears will act like a sailboat without a keel.
A windmill in a pickup trick where the windmill is coupled directly to the ground via gears will act like a sailboat with a keel.
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You may know about it, but you are doing a terrible job of explaining it :)
The keel of a boat has nothing to do with it. The keel has no effect when going straight in the direction of the wind. No "ordinary" boat can go faster than the wind, going straight in the direction of the wind. (One could, in theory, make a Blackbird-like boat that can do it, though I think the friction/drag of the water would be too much of a problem to make it work)
The wheels of Blackbird power the fan, not the other way around.
Th
Conveyer belt (Score:3)
Here is a related example. Consider one of those horizontal escalators that you see at airports to help you walk quickly. Remove the guard rails. Say it moves at 1m/s.
Now can you build a cart that has a wheel on the conveyor, another on the ground next to it, no power source, yet travels forward faster than 1m/s?
Water Hammer (Score:2)
Another nice one (but quite different) is the use of water hammers to pump water up hill powered only by a stream down the hill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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...(One could, in theory, make a Blackbird-like boat that can do it, though I think the friction/drag of the water would be too much of a problem to make it work)...
A hydrofoil with waterwheels. Call it the Flying Blackfish.
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And yes, Blackbird has also done the same thing of going upwind faster than the wind.
BTW, I may actually know about this and the people involved, shocking as it is on Slashdot!
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Because the car is extracting more energy from the wind than the wheels put into the fan. In the end, moving air is being slowed down. That releases energy.
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If the windmill is on the truck and it isn't coupled to the ground via gears or the like, then it will generate no power when the truck is going windspeed-- in that case the windmill is coupled to the truck, not the ground, and the difference in speed between the wind and the truck is zero.
The windmill has to be coupled to the ground.
Only then can the difference between the ground and the wind matter.
Re:Why this works (Score:5, Informative)
It's NOT a windmill! It's a propeller!
The wind does not turn the propeller that then turns the wheels. Instead, the vehicle moves forward which turns the wheels, which then turns the propeller that provides thrust that moves the vehicle faster.
To prove this, they created a 3D printed model you can print out, assemble and put it on a treadmill. The vehicle will stay put on the treadmill - proving that it's a propeller - the treadmill spins the wheels which spins the propeller. The propeller provides thrust allowing the vehicle to stay put on the treadmill.
No violation of physics - the treadmill supplies energy into the system which spins the wheels and powers the propeller In the real life case, the wind supplies the forward movement to spin the wheels that powers the propeller.
How they built a 3D model - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
In the explanation video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - they show a little model propelled by a 2x4 that shows the principle clearly.
Basically, the reason it's hard to understand is the same reason Plane on a Conveyor Belt is a thing. It's not intuitive. But you have to realize a car on a conveyor belt is because the car tires are referenced to the ground, but a plane's tires freewheel and the plane flies based on the airspeed. Basically the ground speed of an aircraft is independent of the airspeed. In fact, a plane can take off backwards given a sufficiently strong wind.
In the same way, this vehicle is traveling through two mediums at the same time - it's using movement over the ground to power a propeller, which is working through air.
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"In the real life case, the wind supplies the forward movement to spin the wheels that powers the propeller."
How? I'm still not seeing how the wind provides drive to the wheels.
Re:Why this works (Score:4, Informative)
The CAD files that were used for the small scale tests: https://www.thingiverse.com/th... [thingiverse.com]
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Well thanks for that really useful reply. Its all clear now.
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I suppose your question is where the initial momentum comes from that turns the wheels?
With the treadmill it's rather obvious. The rest is inertial mass + gravity + friction on the wheels, which some gear transmission turns into thrust caused by the propeller.
With the large scale version it's a bit less obvious.
All I can point out is that the effect does not start right away.
The initial momentum, if not provided by an internal motor has
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"At no point does the propeller work as a turbine"
What starts the car moving then? Presumably someone has to push it because if the prop doesn't act as a turbine at least at the start then there's nothing to make the car move.
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After all it's all physical. The surrounding medium can exert a force on any part of the vehicle. It's just that this doesn't make the propeller a turbine, just like breathing into a fan doesn't make it an electric generator if it is already running. But it does make your voice sound funny.
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Before the prop starts turning, it is basically a sail pushing the vehicle forward .
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I was under the impression the wind was blowing from the front. Obviously not. Either way take your arrogant smugness and shove it Mr Coward.
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you should have seen the original design. It had a circular rail along which 3 small land yachts drove. Now land yachts can not only drive faster than the wind , they can even - by zigzagging - achieve downwind speeds which are higher than the wind speed. So instead of zigzag the land yachts drove around a vertical axis. that worked but it was kind of unwieldy . Then they said hey let's just remove the wheels, fix the yachts on the circular rail and have the rail rotate. Then they remove the bodies of the
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Do you want to try again this time making some sense?
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This explanation is confusing because it doesn't explain how the free-stream wind energy is captured. It doesn't make it clear what is "slowing down" the free-stream wind, which is necessary for energy extraction. That is, the wheels aren't driving the propeller
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It's NOT a windmill! It's a propeller!
The wind does not turn the propeller that then turns the wheels. Instead, the vehicle moves forward which turns the wheels, which then turns the propeller that provides thrust that moves the vehicle faster.
I think you're right, despite what I wrote earlier. It's just confusing because energy still always flows from airstream to blades, and not blades to airstream. It's just not extracted rotationally.
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Basically, the reason it's hard to understand is the same reason Plane on a Conveyor Belt is a thing. It's not intuitive. But you have to realize a car on a conveyor belt is because the car tires are referenced to the ground, but a plane's tires freewheel and the plane flies based on the airspeed. Basically the ground speed of an aircraft is independent of the airspeed. In fact, a plane can take off backwards given a sufficiently strong wind.
Yep.
In the same way, this vehicle is traveling through two mediums at the same time - it's using movement over the ground to power a propeller, which is working through air.
Close, not quite. The force input is the ground to wind speed difference, the propeller gently reduces this difference for power like a stationary windmill does. However, the faster the vehicle goes, due to the gearing it’s functionally equivalent to fixing the propeller base to the ground and running weightless frictionless power lines to power a motor on the vehicle. The propeller still gently feels the ground to wind speed and the vehicle speed isn’t important like the wheels on an
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If you are going directly downwind, then once the vehicle reaches wind-speed, the air is not moving relative to the vehicle, so there is nothing to turn the turbine blades.
There is, apparently, a way to overcome that, but I guess it is not immediately obvious to many people.
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Drag force, coefficient of drag negative? (Score:2)
For drag to be zero or directed forwards, the coefficient of drag would have to be zero or negative, wouldnâ(TM)t it?
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If you rely on drag, that is true. With lift, it's an entirely different situation.
A sailing boat sailing downwind uses only drag, So downwind, you can never sail faster than the wind in a steady situation (meaning that you actually can if the wind varies in strength)
But a sailing boat sailing half-wind speeds up and gets powered all the time, until it creates so much head wind that the drag gets too large. You can compare it to skating: you can get really high speeds with only slow movements of the skater
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You have to watch the second video for a better explanation. TL;DW: the wind push the car, the moving forward respect the ground make the wheel spin, the wheel spin make the propeller push air behind, ??, profit :)
Seriusly, it's a sort of lever, that multiply the push of the wind.
Take a look at this: https://youtu.be/yCsgoLc_fzI?t... [youtu.be]
And I also recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] for another explaination
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The problem with that explanation is that you don't need any wind at all to achieve this. If there is no wind at all, you automatically go faster that the wind, your wheels push the propeller and the propeller pushes the wheels. It's a perpetuum mobile
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Not at all. It's a lever that multiply the current drag. With no wind, no drag, and 0 multiply by any number is still zero.
And like in any mechanical lever (like also in a gearbox) you can multiply the drag, but you decrease the force and so the acceleration. And I haven't take in account friction in account yet.
If you consider the friction at certain point increasing the multiply factor, you also reduce the force below the friction force and you get no increased drag anymore.
Like in the first video linked,
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I can't grasp the "lever" part, but I can imagine that the wind is not actually pushing a "static" propeller, but pushing against a propeller that is blowing back. The wind is then blowing against a "cushion" of air, which in turn pushes the propeller forward (and thereby the wheels).
No lever would help you if both the propeller and the wheels are working to slow you down.
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I can only suggest to watch the first video I linked again. You can see the cart is going forward faster than the bar hold by Derek.
I think the analogy is correct, but in the case of the wind is a bit more complicated. When the vehicle is still, the wind push it forward. Now the wheels are connected to the propeller through a gear box, with a right ratio so the propeller rotate fast enough to push the vehicle further and not too much because the force will be too weak to go against the inevitable resistance
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Yes.
The drag will work in opposition to any energy gained by the prop.. and once the energy gain of the prop is the same as the drag, it stops accelerating.
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When the vehicle moves faster than the wind, the drag force *is* pointing backwards and it *does* try to slow down the vehicle.
The coefficient of drag is not a vector, it's just a scalar coefficient that's always positive. The sign of the drag *force* results from the sign of the *relative* speed (U_fluid - U_body), which will point backwards when the craft is moving faster than the air around it. You can choose the positive and the negative direction arbitrarily, but be *consistent*.
The fact that the vehic
Flying objects (Score:2)
Re: Flying objects (Score:2)
Solving the YouTube Algorithm. (Score:2)
Cool video, but I was surprised to not have found it earlier, or even heard of it (the video is a month old).
Sadly this kind of awesome content, isn't what YouTube feels needs to be propelled faster than all the other monetized turds that dump out of the average recommended feed.
The theory? They wouldn't want their audience getting smart enough to snap out of that YT addiction.
Perhaps that is the key to understanding the mysteries of the YouTube algorith...Oooh, another rug cleaning video! BRB.
Re:Solving the YouTube Algorithm. (Score:5, Informative)
Some suggestions to get you started:
Veritasium : https://www.youtube.com/user/1... [youtube.com]
Mark Rober: https://www.youtube.com/user/o... [youtube.com]
SmarterEveryDay: https://www.youtube.com/user/d... [youtube.com]
Real Engineering: https://www.youtube.com/channe... [youtube.com]
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Just subscribe to the right channels and from time to time you even get useful suggestions. Because if you're mostly watching garbage YT will suggest more garbage. A bit of a catch-22. Some suggestions to get you started: Veritasium : https://www.youtube.com/user/1... [youtube.com] Mark Rober: https://www.youtube.com/user/o... [youtube.com] SmarterEveryDay: https://www.youtube.com/user/d... [youtube.com] Real Engineering: https://www.youtube.com/channe... [youtube.com]
Thanks. I actually watch most of these channels on a semi-regular basis. I simply choose to not login to YT, and thus the "garbage" that gets recommended across the various networks I use, tends to be the algorithm of society.
The "how the hell did this get in my feed?" and "welcome, fellow algorithms" peppered in the comments, tends to validate I'm not alone.
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From my perspective for most YT users, the platform acts much like TV did, but with some features that allows people to interact with others. Hence the quality of the majority of things you'll find on YT isn't that different from Television.
To keep track of stuff that inter
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Counterintuitive, but fascinating (Score:5, Informative)
Debating in the comments how this is possible isn't very useful. Watch the explanatory video. [youtube.com] It's fascinating. Near the end is a model they set on a treadmill - and it runs faster than the treadmill. In a nutshell:
The video also provides references - it turns out that this is nothing new, just relatively unknown. And apparently lacking any sort of practical applications, but it seems like there must be one!
Re:Counterintuitive, but fascinating (Score:5, Informative)
One of the things in the video that I felt was really clarifying was the little setup with the wood beam and the wheels, around https://youtu.be/yCsgoLc_fzI?t... [youtu.be].
Watching the wheels travel faster than the beam pushing/rolling on them gives a good analogy for what's happening, even though it's not exactly the same. But seeing the counter-intuitive difference in speed opened my eyes to what was possible.
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The energy for the treadmill experiment is coming from the treadmill, not from any wind. If anything, air resistance slows it down in the treadmill test.
The real question is conservation of energy.
No conviction (Score:2)
old news (Score:2)
The best explanations are from Cavallaro in 2017 (Score:2)
The best explanations are in Rick Cavallaro's 2017 lecture [youtube.com]. It's an hour long, but as he says in the lecture,
The one that made it click for me was to consider the mechanics of the system, not the aerodynamics. As a result of the counterintuitive nature of lift,
Who am I to disagree. (Score:2)
Taking a bet is not evidence and as the saying goes extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and we hadn't been shown any really strong evidence with the initial claims. I was very sceptical, it would've been trivially easy to fake the videos.
Now it has been proven to Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye, I have to concede. I still don't think that video provides a good explanation about what is going on here. It still looks like free energy.
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I've also been thinking about the psychology of this: We have an intuitive sense that the law of conservation of energy implies a law of conservation of velocity. Things shouldn't be able to go faster than what's driving them. But there's no such thing as a law of conservation of velocity. It simply doesn't exist, and it's a way that our brains fool us into getting the wrong answer when we encounter clever use of gearing as we do with directly downwind faster than the wind.
If you want an extreme exampl
Reference point (Score:2)
In a circuit, it’s typical to only compare voltage differences and it’s often assumed the 0V reference is for all practical purposes zero. Likewise, it makes sense in a car to say the ground speed is zero and to put everything in reference to that because it simplifies a lot of the thinking. But you can do really cool things like making capacitors charge in parallel and discharge in series usin
Good news for physics violators (Score:2)
Maybe the EM Drive works after all!
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Problem is it looks like a windmill but is not. (Score:3)
People look at this thing and think the wind pushes the fan, which spins the wheels. That never happens.
It is a very light weight, low friction device. The wind pushes it, the way the wind pushes YOU when you walk down the street.
Because the thing moves forward, the wheels spin. The axle transfers the spin up to the fan, which spins like a PROPELLER, pushing it just a tiny bit faster than the wind. This in effect pushes more air back against the wind. It is literally blowing air INTO the wind. Not a lot, just a little. So instead of having a max speed equal to the wind, it has a max speed equal to the wind + the tiny bit extra it pushes back.
Counters to "energy being conserved". The energy is always being conserved, but speed is not energy. No rule about speed being conserved. Energy is conserved as follows - the wind is being collected from an area that is larger than the vehicle itself - the propeller, by pushing air backwards, makes the collection area equal to the shape of the vehicle PLUS the disk of spinning air created by the propeller. Net net, it collects more energy from the wind than a normal sail would.
Also note, this effect is so slight that increasing friction, say by putting this in water on a boat, would negate the effect.
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No. That's movement across the flow of wind.
What the blackbird does is accelerate parallel to the wind's direction, and then ultimately goes faster.
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Re:Call me un-surprised... (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, that's done with tacking as explained in your linked Wikipedia article.
Blackbird accelerates faster than the wind in a parallel to its direction.
He covers it in the first video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Re: Call me un-surprised... (Score:3)
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Can't one look at the turbine blades as continuously tacking at an angle to the wind?
It's not a turbine, it's a propeller that pushes against the air.
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Can't one look at the turbine blades as continuously tacking at an angle to the wind?
NO! Because the wheels drive the windmill, not the other way around.
It's not a turbine, it's a propeller.
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Incorrect, but if you'd like to take a bet on it because you believe you're right, I'd happily oblige!
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Can't one look at the turbine blades as continuously tacking at an angle to the wind?
No.
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Yes, you can look at the blades as continuously tacking at an angle to the wind.
Rick's videos even describe it this way.
If you think I'm wrong, I'm happy to bet you on it!
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Though when it's in the direction of the wind it's called jiving. But in the case of the latest America's cup foiling sailboats they actually achieve a VMG higher than the windspeed when going downwind, which is quite impressive.
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Err, sorry, I meant jibing
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Re: Call me un-surprised... (Score:2)
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It's still known though. I remember hearing that the theoretical limit for travelling against the wind without tacking is 2X the speed of the wind. This was at least a decade ago.
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Racing sailboats do it ALL THE FUCKING TIME! [wikipedia.org]
Directly downwind? NO THEY FUCKING DON'T!
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Nice try but plain wrong :P
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This is so wrong - so full of assertions that are shot down *immediately* (because they're so obvious it's what people *would* think) in the above many videos - it hurts to read.
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I guess it IS a mystery to you, as your 'explanation' is entirely wrong.
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That's what the physicist believed too. The misconception comes from a misunderstanding of what is really happening, not because he is a bad physicist, but because the actual explanation for it seems to initially come out of left field somewhere, and it's only after you look at the system as a whole that you see that the reason it works makes perfect sense, and could have easily been predicted if those factors had been accounted for in the beginning.
Watch the video.
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Exactly, the original video was very questionable in its explanation.
Re:Cool (Score:5, Informative)
For a lot of us, $10,000 represents about half a year of full-time work with absolutely no expenditures along the way.
I don't know where you live, but in the US and in western europe. $10,000 is not that much money. In the US, the median household income is about $70,000 a year. In France and Germany, minimum wage is at $20,000 a year.
For a university professor in the US, $10,000 is about a month of salary. For any tech person in the US with a few years of experience working in the private sector, it is less than a month of salary: my undergrads in CS get out the door jobs at $70,000, my MS students gets them at $100,000, my PhD students get them at $140,000.
For this asshole, it's a figure you throw around to get completely schooled by a goddamn Youtuber.
It's great how we don't just have people in allegedly "top-flight" universities who don't even know their own subject matter, but we then pay them enough that they can put $10,000 on a stupid bet with a fucking Youtuber who has a better understanding of the science they're paid to teach. No wonder half the country's so goddamn retarded.
Sure, the veritaseum guy is a Youtuber. He is also a physics PhD who has spent about 10 years doing physics communication. He is not "some random moron off the streets".
For the Veritaseum channel $10,000 is not that much money; they are actually giving it away to fund other science projects.
The physics faculty is in the second half of his life so he probably looks more for places to spend his money than make it and who cares about physics education. So the physics professor saw a badly designed experiment with a poor explanation. The experiment was so badly designed and explained that he got Veritaseum to say "I think I may have lost the bet". So the physic professor agreed that if you can prove him wrong, he would give $10,000 toward science education, which frankly he was probably going to give anyway.
What he got out of it is a public display of science, a deep investigation into the question that was not clear, and the funding a bunch of other science projects. That's a pretty good deal!
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Replies aren't meant to necessarily contradict. I intended to give more context. But now that you mention it, it does contradict it a good bit.
He said $10,000 is half a year of salary for a lot of us. Slashdot audience is mostly techies in the USA and western Europe. I provided data (though without citation, but it is easy to find) that shows that for us (slashdot audience), $10,000 is no where near half a year of salary; though it is a non-trivial sum.
The implication of "getting schooled" is that the physi
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While self-identity is a nebulous topic, I will venture that the vast majority of us aren't entire households.
Most slashdoters probably live in their mom's basement! :)
More seriously, when I think about money, I think about money for the household. I don't think of it as my money or my wife's money.
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That's about $10/h. A starting wage that people tend not to be stuck with for long,
That's true in the US!
But $10/hour is not that bad on some parts of the world. In many parts of Africa $10/hour is pretty good. In Bengladesh or Pakistan, $10/hour is decent. In many parts of India $10/h is not bad.
Though I suppose most of Slashdot audience are techies in the US or in western Europe. and then $10/hour is very low.
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2021 Federal Minimum Wage * 40 hour work week * 50 week (2 weeks off)
$13.69*40*50 = $27,380 for a year.
If you say a lot of us, are being paid minimum wage for full time work, there is defiantly a problem with our society, much larger than a bet on YouTube.
Being that the physicist bet only $10,000 was a good sign on his uncertainty that it is impossible. While dropping $10k on a bet may hinder your finances it is usually small enough for most people to recover from it (they may have to keep their car for 5