So, will it take off?Follow

But why isnt there forward movement? Unless I am missing something, it seems to be an extra constraint you have put on the problem.

But just because the belt is moving opposite the dirrection of the plane doesnt mean the plane could not move forward.

To me, the wheels are not a necessity in the movement of the plane. Their main purpose is to just keep the plane moving without having it scrape along the runway. (I realized I didnt make mention of this in my prior post, which was my mistake)

The wheels on a plane are just to reduce friction, not to generate wind.

Why is that such a hard concept for some people to grasp?

That is only true if the wheels pushing against the conveyor were the source of the object's propulsion.

If you strapped a rocket engine to a car on the same treadmill, the same rules apply to the car as the plane. The treadmill is not going to matter since the rocket pushes on the air, not the treadmill.

Exactly. No one is arguing that a plane cannot take off without forward movement. That is just ludicrious. We are arguing that the plane does indeed move foreward regardless of the speed that the wheels are spinning since they do not propel the craft, the prop/jet engines do. The push is gained from pushing on AIR not pushing on the CONVEYOR.




Edited, Jul 20th 2006 at 4:33pm EDT by Elderon[/quote]



The plane won't be able to move forward, the wheels have nothing to do with the physical act of moving the plane, however they are the means to which the force of the engines move the plane forward. If they are spinning in a continous manner on something going the exact same speed in the same direction they will go nowhere, nor will the plane.

Relax, I'm fairly sure I'm wrong..however that never stops me from arguing til I'm blue in the face

Now, if the experiment was done in a vaccuum, the plane would go nowhere. It would actually probably overheat and blow up.

Without reading all the other posts here, it seems to me that the airplane WILL take off, but only when the conveyor reaches the speed that the airplane would normally need to reach to take off. The airplane should achieve lift by matching the speed of the conveyor at normal takeoff speed.

The only real gain is space consumption. You couldn't take off at half speed or anything goofy like that.

If it was done in a vaccuum, would any necessary combustion even take place?

Looks like there is an echo

Edited, Jul 20th 2006 at 4:53pm EDT by PsiChi

Nah, I'll pass