Originally posted by: loic2003
Originally posted by: Phokus
can someone explain the conundrum plz?
You have a large treadmill/conveyor belt. It matches the speed of wheels, so if you put a car (or any vehicle that moves by physically turning it's wheels) and drove forward at 10mph, the mill would automatically move at 10mph in the opposite direction, so viewing the car from the side would show that the car doesn't actually move anywhere dispite it's wheels turning.
Then you take an airplane, and put that on the conveyor. Some idiots couldn't figure that planes use thrust to move, so wheel speed is irrelevant (think planes with skids for landing on snow or water). As the thrust of the plane moved it forward, the conveyor would try to keep up, but would always be slower than the aircraft's wheels since the plane is moving forward. Theoretically, the conveyor speed would increase (exponentially?) until the aircraft took off.
It really highlighted some serious idiots who thought planes had powered wheels or that the speed of the wheels made a difference to the thrust of the aircraft (bearing resistance has been ignored in this example).