How to go Faster than “Mach 1” on a Surfboard
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 พ.ย. 2020
- I'm an avid surfer, and have been wanting to make a video about the physics of surfing for a long time! There's an art to catching a big wave without crashing, and in this video I explain the physical principles that enable all of it! A surfer harvests energy from a wave, effectively by positioning themselves on a moving ramp with very little friction - or really sort of directional friction, as I'll explain in the video. Once standing on a wave, you can play a lot of games with the angle of the board to change direction and accelerate, sometimes actually going faster across the water than the wave you're riding! The footage showing angled motion on a wave comes courtesy of my brand new quadcopter which will surely be appearing in many videos in the future!
shareable GIFs:
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Music and stuff:
I Dunno by grapes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/...) ccmixter.org/files/grapes/16626
Pink Lemonade by Silent Partner is licensed under a Creative Commons license
Image credits:
Still from Mythbusters Clip "Riding a Shockwave"
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Bell X-1 rocket-powered experimental aircraft - public domain
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Wingsuit jump by Wingsuiting
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Fin hat from Margaritaville Caribbean Shop
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#physics #surfing #waves - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
It was much more interesting than I thought it would be.
That’s the goal - Glad you liked it!
His video on the physics of a ping-pong ball being ejected from a call lady was even more captivating 😀
Hey, this actually might be similar to the Veritasium "faster-than-wind cart" saga!
I know a wave isnt actually a moving medium, but instead a force traveling through a mostly stationary medium, but I think the physics might actually be related anyway, because in both cases the reference frame doesn't particularly matter.
It should be basically the same - this is just me thinking out loud, but on a surfboard, the 'rolling hill' is only intermittently having an effect on you, whereas the sail on a sailboat is sort of... always in the path, as though it was always under the water in a current. so the wave is just an intermittent version of the same system as the wind. it's like if you had very regular wind gusts. the thing about it being a boundary layer is interesting though, the difference between the overall current of "still" water, and a wave poking up out of the surface.... hmm.
I came back to this video for exactly the same reason
Not really the key term there was 'faster than the wind, down wind' :/
@@appledragon1015 Faster than the wave, "down-wave" :/
@@Goldfish_Vender in the Veritasium video the thing was going faster than the wind while going parallel to the wind in this the person surfing is going faster than the wave yes but he isn't going parallel so he's not going what you could call "down wave"
Here's something I learned after learning to shortboard.
I used to see shortboarders pumping but didn't know why they were doing it.
They said "to get speed" but I didn't understand how until I learned to do it myself.
When you pump, you "jump" the board or at the very least "lift" the board a tiny bit when you are at the bottom of the wave. You do this with the intention to get to the top half of the wave.
When you get there, then you present the wave with the entire flat bottom of your board which will give you a huge push! you ride down and when you reach the bottom, you turn kind of sharp, bend your knees and jump again back to the top half of the wave.
You can really move if you do this right!
See, that's why I would just build a dam. What you're describing sounds exhausting! :p You have all this water and you're doing the work to get that extra speed. If I let the sun get all the water up in the mountains and just use gravity to power my car, I can come over to the beach and watch you get super tired :p
I've never wanted to surf before but this video makes me want to surf. Too bad I don't live near any oceans. If I ever get the chance tho then I'll know how it works physics wise which is pretty cool. Great video
If you get the chance it's a lot of fun!
Lakes and wide rivers and canals can have some decent waves when the wind gets strong.
This video is very interesting. In the 10 years since I've last gone surfing I've earned a degree in physics and have almost finished my PhD. I haven't critically thought about these systems at all.
I would continue binge watching the channel if it wasn't 3:32 in the morning
Cool bike trailer. Love to see people getting around without a car.
SO much easier than taking a car to the beach for a whole pile of reasons. I also nearly exclusively bike to the lab on campus cause it's only a couple miles away. It's nice to be outside for a bit before sitting motionless at a microscope for a few hours!
I just bought a leimai fatbike and now I'm debating whether I should even get a driver's license
The Netherlands has joined the chat
I discovered your channel by chance couple of weeks ago and I'm so glad I did! I subscribed simply after watching one video. You have a great way of explaining things along with those great animations and footages and of course the occasional humor bits! I learn a lot thanks to your content which is very enjoyable to watch and is also very high quality. Your enthusiasm in making those videos is very noticeable and a fun thing to see in every video, man.
You deserve way more exposure - and I think that if you keep up with those frequent uploads and perhaps with support/a shout out from those big physics channels you will get to be one of the big ones too, like Veritasium, because your content is on the same level as theirs in my opinion.
Keep up the great work dude!
Thanks - Glad you made it here! Trying to get enough "viral" video sharing has always been difficult, but I'm glad I've got the audience I do!
"I see absolutely no way for this to end badly." 😂😂😂
I mean... have I mentally considered a few ways it might be physically possible to test this effect? maybe...
@@AlphaPhoenixChannel ooh, that sounds awesome! Maybe don't involve people more than necessary though...
Don't worry, all outcomes contribute to science and are therefore good.
@@eldricliew6223 If any of our actions are properly recorded and analyzed they can be a contribution to science therefore everything we do is good
@@AlphaPhoenixChannel
I see nothing wrong with this.
It's just an Orion Drive.
But sideways.
This is such high quality content. Glad to have found your channel! Yay algorithm!
Yes, there really is interesting physics everywhere! While you weren’t travelling faster than the speed that a wave travels inside water, you were travelling faster than the speed that a wave travels between water and air. While the “in water” one is what we usually refer to as the “speed of sound”, sound can still travel across the water-air interface. On the ocean it would be very difficult to detect, but in a confined environment it would definitely be detectable. I remember doing a physics lab experiment where we measured the speed of waves across water and used that to determine the surface tension. But because the propagation speed is so low, particularly high sound frequencies (10kHz or so) will likely have wavelengths so small that the more microscopic behaviour of water comes into play.
huh that's neat - I'd never thought about the nonlinerity of sound conduction across an interface like that!
wow, watched a bunch of your videos tonight, gotta say your video's quality is way higher then your sub-count (although its slightly better now!).
Really well done man. Never occurred to me that surfers are actually traveling faster than the wave when set parallel, pretty cool!
I appreciate that you didn't really explain what mach is directly. You explained it indirectly and assumed we're smart enough to either know what it means already, or be able to figure it out from what you said about it.
Gotta say thank you for this video. Just took a leap of faith to study naval architecture, and this makes me excited!
The most educational surfing tutorial ever made
I watching and eating suddenly I realized video was over... 😣 I didn't notice 14 minutes it just felt like a minute I need more videos like this 👌
Wow this channel’s subs are exploding!!Really amazing videos, dude honestly I love how interesting your explanations are.
Hey man! Just found your channel, never give up! This stuff is just super interesting and your passion is electric. Love it
Thanks! glad you made it here!
You have some of the most unique content and ideas, great work!
Love to see your sub count going up by a hundred every time I get to the next video. So much interesting content!
I did not click this video thinking I'd be learning to surf but now I want to try it lol
Awesome!
I see this as my first step to learn surfing this year. Sub deserved 👌🏼
No idea how you only have 89k subscribers! Great production quality and great content!
Great video! The relative motion of the ball and ramp was very helpful.
That's how I've tried to explain proper weight distribution to anybody trying to start surfing for years, but never made it into video form. "imagine you're laying on a skateboard but the ground is moving" doesn't have as much impact as a 3 second slow motion clip of a ping pong ball =D
@@AlphaPhoenixChannel even with the explanation and video it's hard to make the jump in your mind between reference frames. I don't think I could have made it without the video that was provided. Even with a perfect camera setup the video would look the same in both frames.... other than the ball wouldn't look like it was turning.
your channel is a gem, bud!
That was a beautiful video clip. Beautiful both in concept and visually. Like button smashed, and subscribed.
Good analysis and nice mixing between sports and sience.
Thanks for this video, love it
Super interesting video. Not that it needs an extra example, but kayakers riding on standing waves on a river is a good analogy for the ball rolling over the motionless ramp. :)
I always found wakesurfing mesmerizing. Riding along in pace with the boat without being attached to it at all (sure, it's only going around 10mph, but still). Plus, you can in theory ride an endless wave until the boat runs out of gas.
I'm very impressed that this made me interested in physics
Also, just to add another comment on top - Your way of doing stuff reminds me so much of how Destin from Smarter Every Day makes his videos, that it was familiar enough for me to instantly subscribe and watch new videos like I've been watching them for ages. I have no ide how that works in terms of our psychology and so on, but ... good job, I guess? The content stands up for iteslf regardless, so that's a GJ for sure! :)
thanks! a comparison to Destin is a hell of a compliment!
That was an excellent video!
Judging by your content quality, you ought to have 10x the subscribers! Nice videos, man, and I hope to see you picking up more fans soon. Keep it up!
Haha I wish! The algorithm frequently feels like it’s not my friend
Jumping out a fighter jet at mach 0.9 into the blast of a bomb, in a wing-suit sounds like a great plan!
*in front of the blast of a bomb... lol
Spoilers: this is a plot (such as it was) point in the scifi movie Dark Start...
When you were explaining the Mach reference at the end, I started to wonder if surfing happens elsewhere in the physical world, ie. where an object (knowingly or unknowingly) uses a wave to travel faster than the wave in a non-normal direction (eg. with sound waves, electromagnetic waves). Really fascinating video!
Birds can stand still infront of "stationary wave like air streams" going over bumps in the landscape, or dolphins/surfers riding the front or back wake of ships, probably also electromotors, or particle accellerators can be seen like sth. riding a endles el./magnetic wave ;)
The surfer's speed parallel to the wave is unlimited? That nobel prize for faster than light travel is as good as mine! Now all I need is a substance that I can stick fins into.
Very cool video!
mate you deserve so much more views!!!
Finally, a good tutorial on how to surf
This channel rocks
this is an amazing channel
the surfboard bike trailer also gave me an idea for a project ive been meaning to do too
cool - what's the project?
Outstanding video.
Thanks!
I think I'm gonna replace "rocket science" with "surf science" in my parable vocabulary.
"Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough." - Richard Feynman
Physics is awesome cause it's absolutely everywhere!
This man is a physics chad. He looks like a chad and he certainly knows the physics!
Every time I click on your videos you have 2x the amount of subscriber you had when I watched your last video. You have the TH-cam Algorithm on your side my brother.
holds up to a rewatch.
man, I just enjoy your style of explaining stuff. I really don’t care about the physics of surfing. I live nowhere near a ocean, I don’t own a surfboard and I can’t even swim. But I learned a lot from this video and enjoyed every second of it (:
I find that everything is interesting if it's explained by somebody that cares about the topic. I think surfing is awesome and this one's been a long time cooking. Thanks for watching!
@@AlphaPhoenixChannel Yeah I wish I had more Teachers like you when I was younger. Its so much easyer to learn from someone who is excited about the topic. Find myself learning more and more stuff on YT that nobody could explain to me in school.
Great stuff man! Better than the Ted talk. I'm only learning to surf now and I'm glad I have a deeper understanding of the why/how, thanks to you. Cheers!
What Ted talk?
Also good luck surfing! It’s a blast!
@@AlphaPhoenixChannel the Ted talk on surfing physics. You have well out done them, in simplicity and depth. I doff my cap to you sir
As a fellow physics enthusiast, I quite enjoyed this
thankyou. enjoyed it.
The youtube algorithm is working in your favor! i saw the election maps video and am now watching all this vids on your channel
So it's like how a sailboat can sail faster than the wind, but also even tack to travel up-wind if desired.
Your channel is so awesome, I'm certain you're going to be as big as Cody's Lab or Allen Pan - Sufficiently Advanced some day!
I've dipped the nose into the water many times. Good to see a physical model showing why lol
In shallow water, there’s a good analogy with sound waves. The depth analogises to temperature, and a hydraulic jump to a shockwave.
Awesome video. Not sure if surfing has ever been studied in this way but the camera work and analysis was awesome, wonder if you could publish it somewhere lol
it's been kicking around in my head for years - great excuse to get a "real" drone and demonstrate it from the right angle! glad you liked it!
The concept of sailing into the wind and "blowing" into it faster and faster is fascinating to me. But I do rowing (forwards, not backwards like most lunatics). Water is definitely more interesting when it isn't flat. :) With the wind behind you sit up so your body acts like a sail and ride the waves as long as possible. Into the wind lie down and cut through it like a frisbee, and alternate the oars so you weave side to side up the oncoming waves instead of crashing straight into them.
yo I was your 16000th subscriber! nice job, real close to 2^14
Great video. Just found your channel. Subscribed!
This is great
Things to think about
1. Fins have flex and can move side to side letting it hold speed though a drop or turn
2.it is possible to ride that board in 10 foot plus waves (you put all your a mass on the back of the board and hope wind doesn’t pick you up
Life long surfer here. This video is hilarious 😂
Science + Surfing, I'm in! :)
new Title "How to Surf and catch a wave properly"
First of all this video is amazing ,what program did you use to track the speed of the surfer?, and do you know if humans have created something that break soundspeed inside water, and what happens in that case? Thank you
"So you know how explosions work? Ok.
...
Anyways, let's go surf."
The next Redbull sponsored Xgames sport, Shockwave wakeboarding. I can envision two planes one creating the wave and the other towing the surfer behind riding on some sort of futuristic board. I am no physicist but I think we might be on to something here.
I came here from Reddit, and you're actually pretty cool! Subscribed
haha thanks!
I once took a surfing class....the instructor never described it this way or anything close. He tried to get us to stand up as the wave got to us, instead of gaining/losing relative speed.
Neat!
The white you get with this thing are awesome!
Hey nice vid, pls look into the steepening effect in shore breaking waves it is very related to shockwaves(mach3;), since the wavemedium is changing the waveconducting speed graduali the wave gets compressed and steepened till it tips over on top :)
"If you look closely, there's fascinating physics everywhere." Agreed!
The other day, I was watching this powerhead in my aquarium that uses a motor to push water through a pinhole-like opening creating near-laminar flow. As the fast-moving water exited the pump, the resulting turbulence chattered back and forth. Why does it do that?
I have a cursory understanding of the Navier-Stokes equations and the Reynold's number, as well as intro physics-level fluid mechanics. But as a biologist, I would love a more advanced explanation! I see this sort of harmonic motion (is it?) everywhere, and I wonder "why is it that this restoring force MUST overshoot and create oscillations in everything?" I mean, I know that the energy has to be dissipated for the object to come to a full stop (thus perfectly elastic vs perfectly inelastic collisions and deadblow hammers), but in a fluid, where there are so many degrees of motion, and where the N-S equation makes me think the water would just create smaller and smaller vortices dissipating energy that way, why is that the motion tends to oscillate? Perhaps the pump was a bad example because it's continuously outputting power, but I've seen this oscillation also happen when siphoning water into a bucket. After I stop the siphon and the water remaining in the hose travels down the tube into the bucket, the water bounces up and down inside the hose a few times before coming to a halt. Why? It's crazy because I don't even see any ripples in the surface when this happens, and it seems odd that the water would reverse directions and travel a foot back up the hose rather than dissipate its energy in vortices.
Hopefully you understood what I'm trying to say, and hopefully this could lead to an interesting video idea (though it's also very possible that I'm just uneducated on something very basic). In terms of spelling and those kinds of errors, I'm sick right now so sorry about that.
If you are talking of a perfect sphere, I have to point out the third possible outcome with the sphere coming to rest at the top of the crest. It may happen very rarely, but as a math guy I'm trained to bark at such things...
Great videos.
absolutely - the unstable equilibrium at the top was in an earlier draft of the script but I removed it for taking up too much explaining on a very nonphysical point. I hate having to crunch for time...
Hmmm makes me wonder... the mythbusters test had a dummy do a standing jump and nothing happened, yet action movies always run away and then get blown forward. Kind of like paddling away from the wave allows you to catch the wave...
:P
And we all know Chuck Norris can run a good fraction of the speed of sound so the effect is likely real in his movies.
Hmmm. That checks out! I bet we could just ask his pyro team and they'd confirm it was real
yup
I'm binge watching everything
thanks!
Haha glad you like the channel!
14:05 you could also drop a comet in the ocean, wait for the tsunami to reach shore, use a magnetic rail and a sabot system to accelerate you to near the speed of the tsunami as it starts to build, then fly off of the rail and use your surf boards aerodynamics to control your descent onto the wave, and ride it for the short time before it breaks and becomes your own personal blender
You're in Isla Vista? I used to live there!... before quarantine, damn I should've surfed more
the surfer's speed parallel is unlimited? holy shit you can go faster than light on a surfboard!!
Thanks
My kinda guy! does science, rides bicycles and does a cool sport :D
Those are some stunning aerial shots! Maybe it's time to upgrade your recording camera to that Mavic. I'm sure we have the AI technology to remove the drone noise ;)
Hehe, that was interesting to watch :^)
Have you seen the hydrofoil surfboards? They look supernatural when used by an expert.
Take a look at *Foiling NY's* video titled *"How to Dock Start a Hydrofoil".*
Watching these foil videos get me started thinking about making a hydrofoiling robot. One thought I have is to use an off balance spinning wheel to provide the pumping motion. *Foiling NY* has videos showing him pumping the foil from above (using a drone). He even measures the pumping frequency for us. This is just one (of many) strange robot ideas I haven't been able to get out of my head.
Thanks for the fun video. Your videos often get me thinking about things I want to try myself. I found myself searching Aliexpress for retroreflectors after recently watching your speed of light video. I minored in physics (I majored in chemistry) and used to teach high school physics. Your videos are a lot of fun to watch.
I have seen videos of those boards - they look awesome! unfortunately I've never gotten to ride one. I'll check out that video
"How to go faster than Mach 1 on a surfboard" the long awaited sequel to "How to reach supersonic speeds on Yak-52 and pretend its OK"
You are on a path to match cody's lab. I think you will have a million subs in a year
Nice explanation. I now understand the theory behind surfing... too bad practical excellence only comes from doing. (Reminds me of my college days... ha ha ha)
"It's a little bit of a balancing act." 🤔 Isn't surfing entirely a balancing act?
Would not a "zero momentum twist" be the right maneuver when your nose goes past the plane of the water-level..?
How did you make that clip for your GoPro handle? 3D printed? And is the handle itself homemade? If so, how'd you make that? Thanks!
The handle is just a stick of pvc and the clip is a custom part - fits into a GoPro mount. I only lost one of them while filming! Lol.
If you’re looking for the STL I can throw it on Thingiverse
I don't know if you got the velocities quite right with going frame by frame, 20m/s is like 40 mph. Or am I misreading those graphs?
Hey I know that beach. I was defenestrated at a party a few blocks from there about 15 years ago.
Is the propagation speed of a wave in water constant?
Next up - windsurfing wave riding!
"Consider a spherical cow of uniform density, ...."
8-)
So... If light is a propagating wave, can a particle surf the wavefront faster than the speed of light?
*Landau has entered the chat*
*reads the title
You sir have my attention.
haha I hope that AFTER watching the video you don't consider it too clickbaity?
@@AlphaPhoenixChannel nah you're good
😁