Good to be wrong (sometimes)
- Blog
- 5 July 2021
The image shows Blackbird, a car that can go faster than the wind that's propelling it. It features in Veritasium's video below.
It worked but Professor Kusenko didn't believe it and bet $10,000 dollars that he was right.
He lost. I must admit that if one of my students had come to me with this idea I would have said it can't work as it breaks the law of conservation of energy. The energy source is the wind so it seems that some how the prop is gaining energy from the wind even though it is going faster than it. Maybe we can think that the wind has simply changed direction?
Here is another great video on making the model.