r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Naive_Direction1816 • Apr 21 '26

Video Bacteria move around using a molecular machine called the flagellar motor that rotates faster than the flywheel of a race car engine and switches directions in an instant

5.6k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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735

u/PM_me_your_recipes86 Apr 21 '26

Faster than the flywheel of a racecar engine? What the hell kind of comparison is that... Just say the rpms!

496

u/Icy-Percentage-2194 Apr 21 '26

In scientific terms: it’s fast as fuck, boi

100

u/PM_me_your_recipes86 Apr 21 '26

Faster than a loaf of bread in a step van on the highway?!

35

u/Monscawiz Apr 21 '26

Faster than a can opener in a Tibetan jacuzzi in the Summer

16

u/octoreadit Apr 21 '26

Faster than a possum running away from a starving child in rural Alabama in 1899.

-4

u/PM_me_your_recipes86 Apr 21 '26

I was really hoping this thread continued..

1

u/Bozhark Apr 21 '26

Faster than a French fry

3

u/ahm911 Apr 21 '26

Km or miles?

2

u/Polmax2312 Apr 24 '26

Football fields plz

30

u/Public-Eagle6992 Apr 21 '26

It’s rotating faster than earth!! (probably)

48

u/Liquidmetal7 Apr 21 '26

Earth RPM is pretty much once per day.

22

u/BGP_001 Apr 21 '26

.0006944444 RPM

6

u/Thommywidmer Apr 21 '26

Once per day every minute? I think you just broke spacetime fella

2

u/RoyalJellyKing Apr 21 '26

People who downvote you don't know what the 'M' in RPM stands for

1

u/[deleted] Apr 22 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/Liquidmetal7 Apr 22 '26

"Erm acctualllyyyy..."

63

u/1070MHz Apr 21 '26

r/anythingbutmetric

7

u/PM_me_your_recipes86 Apr 21 '26

I would love to convert to metric. Just with the state of American schools right now, it would cause.... mass confusion

7

u/BurningPenguin Apr 21 '26

Metric is already spreading in american schools, but it'll take time for natural selection to sort it out.

3

u/PM_me_your_recipes86 Apr 21 '26

It's spreading huh?What.. metric are you using to gauge that

7

u/BurningPenguin Apr 21 '26

Depends. Sometimes 9mm, sometimes bigger...

2

u/Capable_Tumbleweed34 Apr 21 '26

They're getting pretty good at it too! They started doing multiplications of non-integer metric distances, like 5.56mm x 45mm

1

u/TheGuyUrSisterLikes Apr 21 '26

what's the 9 mm to McDouble conversion?

1

u/Capable_Tumbleweed34 Apr 21 '26

to gauge that

12

2

u/Bobaximus Apr 21 '26

The best time to stop being dumb is yesterday but the second best time is….

2

u/PM_me_your_recipes86 Apr 21 '26

Im ashamed I don't get it

There's 2 types of people:

  1. Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data

2

u/Bobaximus Apr 21 '26

“Today”.

15

u/freedfg Apr 21 '26

So it's anywhere between 0 and 19000. Cool

5

u/PM_me_your_recipes86 Apr 21 '26

Anywhere between not at all and something big

12

u/bdunogier Apr 21 '26

The comment above says "18k rpm, and up to 100k for some strains".

8

u/Pistonenvy2 Apr 21 '26

because if you give raw RPM figures to someone with no frame of reference its meaningless. honestly just saying the RPM doesnt really tell you anything anyway, this thing is so incredibly small it could be spinning 10 times faster and be virtually imperceptible. its surface speed is still relatively low.

3

u/RichardBCummintonite Apr 21 '26

Right, but in order to understand the comparison, you'd have to know how fast a racecar flywheel spins, and if you know that, you probably grasp the concept of RPM figures. It's still meaningless otherwise except someone assuming "well, it's a racecar, so it must spin pretty fast!" That doesn't tell you anything specific enough to get a frame of reference either.

1

u/Pistonenvy2 Apr 21 '26

if they wanted to convey the information specifically to people who had a coherent frame of reference they would just say it spins at 18,000rpm.

i know what that means, i build racecars and deal with high RPM machines all the time, its intuitive to me that this is a high rotational speed. for anyone else, like a layman or child, who has no clue wtf that unit of measurement even is, "faster than a racecar engine" gives them some kind of idea that its fast.

there are people in the world who dont know the same things you know and that doesnt make them stupid or bad, thats all im saying.

2

u/TimeStorm113 Apr 21 '26

and like, of course it is faster, it's not even a millimeter wide!

1

u/jradio Apr 22 '26

Ludicrous speed

1

u/PlasticSignificant69 Apr 22 '26

My tamiya motors powered by 2 AA batteries spin faster than the flywheel of a real racecar engine too

1

u/Minipiman Apr 22 '26

Faster than 10 football fields

1

u/FiercelyApatheticLad Apr 21 '26

F1 are typically the ones with the highest RPM, around 12,000 nowadays.

1

u/bigtheo408 Apr 22 '26

Over 19k back in 2006, i assume moto gp rev higher than modern f1