Derek Muller is a YouTuber who has a popular channel called Veritasium on the platform where he likes to break down science for the layman. Wikipedia describes him as a “science communicator, filmmaker, television personality and inventor”. In May, he posted a video about Blackbird, a vehicle that runs on wind power. He was curious about whether any wind-powered vehicle can move faster than the wind itself for a sustained amount of time when downwind and decided to ride in the BlackBird and see for himself. The vehicle is the creation of Rick Cavallaro, a former aerospace engineer, and his team and was sponsored by Google and Joby Energy in 2010.
“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 said to Business Insider in a statement.
Within a week of him posting the video, Muller got an email from Alexander Kusenko, a professor of physics at UCLA, that his claim had to be wrong and a vehicle like the Blackbird would break the laws of physics. Muller suggested a wager of $10,000 on it, perhaps thinking the professor would not agree to the bet. To his surprise, he agreed and even roped in some of the big names in science like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson to weigh in with their opinions. But Muller turned out to be right as his vehicle reached 27.7 mph in a 10mph tailwind. The professor had to pay up. Here is the video.
“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 said to Business Insider in a statement.
Within a week of him posting the video, Muller got an email from Alexander Kusenko, a professor of physics at UCLA, that his claim had to be wrong and a vehicle like the Blackbird would break the laws of physics. Muller suggested a wager of $10,000 on it, perhaps thinking the professor would not agree to the bet. To his surprise, he agreed and even roped in some of the big names in science like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson to weigh in with their opinions. But Muller turned out to be right as his vehicle reached 27.7 mph in a 10mph tailwind. The professor had to pay up. Here is the video.
Back in 2010, Cavallaro and his team demonstrated that the vehicle could travel downwind 2.8 times faster than the wind, a record that was confirmed by the North American Land Sailing Association, adds the report.
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