The School of Engineering at the University of Lincoln will celebrate British Science Week with a FREE hands-on workshop looking at catapults and the Magnus Effect.
Objects fall based on the law of gravity, and you would expect cups to just fall to the ground. However, in the Earth’s atmosphere, the presence of the air produces a drag (a slowing force) which changes this completely. If an object spins, then the air will provide a force at right angles to both the spin axis and the relative air velocity. (In physics, this is described by the cross product of two vectors.)
See how we can make two paper cups fly by making them spin using the Magnus Effect.
