Please Neeyik save this thread, it is making me sad.

Now i come to think of it. Everything i asked seems so blatantly obvious i cant even believe i even needed to ask in the first place.

wish i was stoned so i could have an excuse :D

There's a 541 page thread over on the Mythbusters forums about the plane on a conveyor belt topic. I remember reading a few pages a long time ago, they were basically complaining that they didn't test the original myth which supposedly said the speed of the conveyor belt is supposed to accelerate to match the speed of the plane's wheels throughout the entire thing.

If that's the case, I say the wheels fall off and the whole point about the plane sitting still or taking off is moot?

The conveyer belt would need to go the speed of infinity or untill as you say the wheels of the plane fall off :D I think.

The plane would still have the same forward thrust(or do you call it backward thrust?) and air speed regardless of how fast the conveyer belt kept up.

Think of a toy car on a bit of string on a conveyer belt. It still takes the same force and speed of your hand to "pull" the car off the belt no matter how fast the belt goes.

That was basically my thought as well. There's still apparently quite enough of a debate about it, though.

Hahahahahahahahahahah! omg. I'll try to think of some more ****ing stupid questions. These answers are making me giggle uncontrollably. [rofl]

What am i wrong ? :S

Because it's the structure of the train that is accelerating, and anything fixed to the train, like the passengers - the ball, when thrown, isn't attached and so doesn't accelerate relative to the train's surroundings, but seems to accelerate backwards to those in the train.

It's all relative.

You're still confusing ground speed with air speed.
i also assume you mean a take off speed of 100mph, as top speed and take off speed are different.

With zero wind, the take off airspeed (which is the one that counts) of 100mph is the same as the ground speed.
With a 100 mph headwind, the stationary aircaft has zero ground speed and 100mph airspeed.
With a 100mph tailwind, the stationary plane has zero ground speed and -100mph air speed. At 100mph ground speed it has zero airspeed. At 200mph ground speed it has 100mph air speed and takes off - remember, with an aircraft it's* speeds are relative to the air, so 200mph relative to the ground is only 100mph to the aircraft.

It's all relative!




*I don't care if there's technically no apostrophe, consider John's, Janes, the cat's, tha house's, etc - it's is therefore appropriate!

Next challenge: Understand spacetime [rofl]

So the math calculations i did was wrong from the link i posted earlier? And the plane does take off or am i reading what you have said is not making sense to me atm?

Can you plug in the numbers correctly in to the formula from the link so i can better understand it?

Thanks.

I know people who think that the plane could take off.

IT MAKES NO SENSE. THERE IS NO AIR GOING OVER THE WINGS, THUS NO LIFT.

Also about the train, when youre inside a train going a 100mph, everything else inside the train is going 100mph. So if you threw a ball it'd move relative to the train, still about 80mph though (in the same direction as the train)

Replace wheels on a plane with skis and you have your answer.







Here is another example.

If the train is traveling at 80mph and instantly accelerated to 100mph while the ball is freely resting on the floor, then the ball would accelerate in the apposite direction to 20mph (give or take few mph). Thus the ball would continue traveling forward with the train at 80mph yet moving in the apposite direction of the train at 20mph. At some point the ball will stop do to rolling friction that the ball has to deal with, thus the ball will travel at 100mph with the train once the balls stops.

If the train is traveling at 100mph, and you jumped up for a long period of time, then you would not land in the same spot from witch you jumped from.

If the train is traveling at 80mph and instantly accelerated to 100mph and at the same time during acceleration you jumped up, you would land few feet back from your original point where you were standing before your jumped.

Why is it, my missus can wipe her bum with no issue, but if I put my wang near it she freaks. http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo.../confused1.gif

It would be affected exactly as much as you are affected by the acceleration. I feel like I've walked into a Cheech and Chong movie.

Your missus doesnt put tp in her mouth after wiping her bum.

I think it's because planes are driven forward by engine thrust and not wheel motion.

Someone brainier than me will explain it more thoroughly.

For the love of Gordon!

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Can someone who actually knows what they are talking about please save this lot from themselves??

How do you think a plane actually moves forward in the first place? In the case of a propeller-driven craft, the props are wings and generate lift in a horizontal direction by virtue of their rotation. An incorrect but useful analogy is to imagine yourself lying on the ground and then pulling yourself along with a rope. Assuming the plane has sufficient power to overcome any friction between the wheels and the conveyor belt, it would take-off just by dragging its undercarriage over the belt - regardless as to what the belt is doing or how fast it's moving. Sticking to the analogy, picture the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where Jones is pulling himself along behind the truck: the ground is moving backwards far faster than he is moving forward, but he still moves forward. Why? Because he can pull himself forward with more force than there is friction between him and the ground. Yes, I know this is a movie but it wasn't a CGI effect; that was a real person being dragged behind a truck.

I think the easiest way to think about it is that the wheels spin freely at a variable rate depending on how fast the ground below them is moving (EDIT: well, ground doesn't usually move, but I guess it does relative to the plane, and we are talking about conveyor belts anyway). Thus, the wheels are going to move as fast as they have to as the plane propels itself forward, making the conveyor belt rather irrelevant.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, the other concept I was referring to earlier regarding the debate over at the MB forums makes more sense now that I think about it in terms of a free-spinning belt that moves as a result of the movement of the wheels. Probably a bad comparison but kind of like a hamster wheel, I guess. In this situation I think it would be kind of hard to do in real life, though.