Veritasium: Traveling faster than the wind


I'm open to the idea; however, the experiment was not conclusive

Here are the comments that I posted to the youtube page 

Their sail boat theory is missing a critical point of understanding.  A sailboat works because it is playing off the difference in velocity of two fluids.  Water and air.  The keel is the "sail" for the water.  because water is 800 times more dense then air, the keel is smaller.  without tacking, a sail boat on a cylindrical Earth could not beat the balloon.  its overall speed can be greater than the wind; however, its velocity downwind is never greater than the wind.  Tacking  allows the sailboat to beat the wind because speed is redirected from one tack to the other and for a brief moment,  while the boat is pointing downwind, its higher than wind speed velocity is improving its downwind average.  Also the physical moving of the sail from one point of tack to the other acts as flipper giving another little boost (this energy comes from human muscles) .   So the sail boat is storing kinetic energy orthogonal to the wind that can then be vectored back.   I think it looked like it worked because you stored up kinetic energy that was then used when the wind died down.  and so you were traveling faster than the wind for that moment.   To convince me, a  computer collected wind and ground speed log where data is taken at least every 1/2 second over the course of a run.


Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/veritasium-than-51875764

Tagged:
Sign In or Register to comment.

About Cookies

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website.

Learn more: https://www.cookiesandyou.com/