YouTuber Wins Crazy $10k Bet with Professor by 'Breaking' the Laws of Physics | Hacker News Reader

YouTuber Wins Crazy $10k Bet with Professor by 'Breaking' the Laws of Physics

businessinsider.com.au

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The YouTuber is Derek Muller, his channel is Veritasium (https://youtube.com/c/veritasium), I really like his content and I would recommend it to anyone!

Kusenko should get a lot of credit here: he bet on his beliefs, agreed to terms, and then acknowledged the truth and paid up when he was wrong.

I don’t think his behavior can be described as “acknowledged the truth” more like “he stopped arguing, conceded the money and still refused to accept the truth”.

He gets credit for paying up yes, but without clearly acknowledging the truth of the matter it seems very hollow and frankly childish and doesn’t reflect positively on him.

You're right; that's a better description, and I was wrong to suggest that he 'acknowledged the truth' in any strong way.

I think my feeling here is in the general vein of Alex Tabarrok's "a bet is a tax on bullshit" or Brian Caplan's "bettor's oath". I'm just happy that he's paying up and not trying to weasel out of the bet. Losing can be painful --- I'm sure losing $10,000 like this stings a lot --- and I want to be sympathetic to that reality: if he can't be magnanimous in this moment, he should at least get some kudos for the fact that he seems to have shut his mouth.

I suspect it was an organized publicity stunt. In the interview the Prof. said "now here is the real danger, because if Derek drives very close to the wind that difference in speed goes to zero. if it's one millionth of one percent, that's like a nuclear bomb exploding behind him.", refering to a formula where the force is calculated with speed difference in denominator.

Obviously he can't be serious about it, because it is inconsistent with the belief that the car can't go faster than wind.

Anyway, the whole thing was very interesting and educational.

Watching this since BoingBoing made this cool in 2007, from earlier internet forums like Sailing Anarchy, it's great to see the progress to working models. It dates back to at least the 80's, not sure if it is 100's of years old.

But where from here?

Should it be taught in school under internet memes? Or will it be a circular internet conversation forever? Are circular internet conversations bad? It feels like we will never run out.

Comment from 1895 on 'What does "Sailing faster than the Wind" Mean?' https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/197614156 which is part of the confusion, since people jump to this other meaning.

It's not clear if these rumoured boats in the 80's actually existed and could overpower the water's drag, I assume not - https://issuu.com/latitude38/docs/latitude3894apunse/162 (1985)

Scientists are like a lot of academics, in my humble opinion, they are susceptible to ego and the certainty of their knowledge. Entire careers are built around their ability to be right, and sometimes it can be hard to admit when they are wrong.

His channel is awesome, especially the video about the infinity hotel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxGsU8oIWjY

I'm appalled at the responses here, from belittling to casting doubts without having had a basic look at Derek's video.

If wind speeds a vehicle to some speed, and the vehicle has inertia, and the wind slows down somewhat, how is it surprising that the vehicle would go faster in the wind?

Or, does this vehicle, after acceleration has completed, purport to continuously travel faster than the wind at an indefinite steady state?

> Or, does this vehicle, after acceleration has completed, purport to continuously travel faster than the wind at an indefinite steady state?

That would break the laws of physics wouldn't it? Which is exactly why the professor took the bait.

But then it seems obvious that it could temporarily go faster than the wind due to inertia?

> Or, does this vehicle, after acceleration has completed, purport to continuously travel faster than the wind at an indefinite steady state?

Yes. The vehicle can go faster than the wind in steady state condition. Depending on efficiencies 'any' velocity is possible. It creates thrust by leveraging the different speeds of two media (air and ground). Also works as a boat with two propellers.

Oh man! Definitely watch the videos because this is addressed multiple times. And while it sounds plausible (it bit Kusenko) it's not the explanation! Here's one reason why:

On the craft is a ribbon, it's dangling from the front of the craft. This is called a "telltale" because it tells the direction of the wind from the perspective of the craft. If the craft is at rest, then the telltale points downwind. And if the craft is moving faster than the wind the telltale points the opposite direction -- backwards, if the craft is moving downwind.

What you can see from the runs is that while the telltale is pointing backwards (so, the craft is moving faster than the wind) the craft actually continues to accelerate! In fact while the landspeed record was set as 2.8x the ambient windspeed, the craft was still accelerating, and would have gone faster had they not had to brake.

The videos have a lot more to say and I found them really fascinating and counterintuitive, I wanna really emphasize that you should watch them if you find the idea banal or trivial.

I don't understand why there's confusion. It's not a sail on the thing, it's a turbine. Isn't this just gear ratios? The car goes as fast as whatever power the turbine makes can be delivered through a set a gears (or chains/sprockets...same thing).

It's not trivial to me. You can put one of these things on a treadmill, and it'll outrun the treadmill!

I just don't get why it's confusing. The wind creates basically a fixed RPM motor (assuming constant wind speed) with some amount of power.

If that power is great enough, you drive the wheels through some amount of gearing to get the speed you want. Like that a bicycle wheel travels farther in one revolution than the circumference of the circle of where the pedals are.

No, it’s the other way around: the wheels are driving the propeller at the front of the vehicle. And it can outrun the wind.

If the turbine at the front of the craft was driving the wheels, it would stop working when it got up to the speed of the wind (since the wind speed relative to the craft is zero at that speed)

He has two videos. My opinion while looking at the videos [spoiler alert]:

1) Nah. Nah. [Two boats in a cylinder] Well, that looks right, but I'm not 100% convinced.

2) Unconvinced. Looks possible. What about a similar experiment with wheels? [1] [Similar experiment with wheels] Totally convinced! Also, nice toy model for the treadmill.

[1] I actually didn't imagine all the details about the experiment with wheels. But that exactly what I wish I had imagined if I had more time to think about it.

Derek Muller is a bit of a celebrity at my faculty. He is a fellow Queens University "Engineering Physics" alumni, a degree most people have never heard of. Thanks for putting us on the map, Derek!

Having met him through a friend of a friend, I have only good things to say. Humble and friendly guy.

Just shows how these professors don't know as much as they think they do. Many act like they are so smart and above everyone else. Good to see one go down like this

Academia is one of the worst things that has happened to honest science, in my opinion.

I would have bet against it too! But I would have lost. It’s very much counterintuitive that such a contraption could work. But it does.

It's the physics version of the Monty Hall problem... the answer is very counter-intuitive.

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