Abstract
DURING the last few days, accounts of a new departure in ship propulsion have reached Great Britain. One vessel has been modified to illustrate the working of the new method and has operated in Kiel Harbour. The new invention represents an application of scientific principles known for many years; an early English paper entitled. “The irregular flight of a tennis ball” was published in 1878 by Lord Rayleigh, using the same principle in explanation. The practical deduction from the general physical and mathematical idea is that a body like a circular cylinder, spinning about its axis and moving at right angles to it experiences a force which is at right angles both to the axis of the cylinder and to the direction of translation. The force is proportional to the product of the speeds of rotation and translation.
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B., L. Rotor Ships. Nature 114, 758 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/114758a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/114758a0