Plane on a conveyor belt

[Guest]

oh...and just to end the controversy..... SPOILER ALERT

watch the video on the bottom of this page (pay attention to what the pilot says):

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/mythbusters.html

then read the article here: (link was requiring log in..just copy/pasted the whole article now)

Mythbusters' still happily blowing stuff up
By Susan Young STAFF WRITER

Article Launched: 10/30/2007 03:02:45 AM PDT

Really, does it get any cooler than testing out the classic cartoon joke involving a trail of gunpowder and a big explosion? Not for Mythbuster'' Adam Savage, who deems this blow-up one of his favorites. You can't swing a comatose Sylvester without hitting a rerun of Mythbusters'' on Discovery Channel, but finding fresh episodes can be a challenge since the network rolls out a few at a time throughout the year. The good news is that fans can look forward to seven new episodes beginning Wednesday.
We lit a line of gunpowder to a keg leading to an explosion,'' Savage says of the segment airing Wednesday. It was one of the more minor explosions we've done on Mythbusters,' but more deeply satisfying from a cartoon perspective.'' The series has gone beyond merely being a hit cable series. It's a cultural icon is based in co-host Jamie Hyneman's special effects studio on San Francisco, with most of the myths busted or confirmed right here in the East Bay from Alameda to Dublin. The No. 1 question the 'busters get asked is if they will ever run out of myths? ``We say we'll run out of ideas when people ever stop believing stupid things,'' Savage says. ``We just finished one that has confounded us our entire careers.'' The episode, which airs in December, finds Savage and Hyneman tackling a question baffling everyone from bloggers to pilots: If a plane is traveling at takeoff speed on a conveyor belt, and that conveyor belt is matching the speed in reverse, can the plane take off? ``We put the plane on a quarter-mile conveyor belt and tested it out,'' says Savage about the experiment using a pilot and his Ultralight plane. ``I won't tell you what the outcome was, but the pilot and his entire flight club got it wrong.'' Savage often describes ``Mythbusters'' as ```Jackass' meets Mr. Wizard.'' And when you think about wacky stunts done on the show, Tory Belleci's name invariably pops up. On the Nov. 14 ``Supersized'' two-hour episode, Belleci will attempt to wakeboard from the back of a cruise ship. Not, he says, the craziest thing he's had to do on the show. In fact, this season also has him testing out whether your pants can catch fire while being dragged behind a horse. Other seasons has seen him sticking his tongue onto a frozen pole and getting in a pen with a bull to see if the animal would indeed charge him because he was wearing a red outfit. ``When I was in the arena with the bull or with the crocodile, everything inside my body was saying don't do it, but you know you have to do it,'' Belleci says. ``I feel like I spent my whole life preparing for this job. I loved playing with fire and at 19 I was almost arrested for making a pipe bomb. Everything I used to get in trouble for I'm now doing as my job.'' Both Belleci and Grant Imahara came to ``Mythbusters'' after working at Industrial Light and Magic. ``People always ask why I would leave ILM, and it's because Mythbusters' sounded like fun. Working on movies and TV is a blast, and ILM has the most talented people in the world,'' Imahara, who lives in Oakland, says. But on `Mythbusters' I've been able to go places I would never have access to otherwise.'' Not only that, but Imahara says he believes Mythbusters'' just may be responsible for making nerds cool.
Look at `Heroes' and `Numb3rs' and all these new shows coming out now and we were on the forefront,'' Imahara says. The nerd is the protagonist, the hero. I worked at ILM the same time Masi Oka was there. Who would have thought that two Asian-American nerds from ILM would be on hit shows?''

[KA-T_240]

Chuck, to start it all over again. Your links FAIL.

[Guest]

This post is deleted!

[Guest]

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/tv/11503366.html

hopefully that link will work

[3_Series]

Does it matter if there are snakes on the plane?

[Parker]

hahaha....

[capitlj]

I said no, so what.

[no_slow_clap]

ok im confused and undecided. a few questions

so if the conveyor is moving 100mph, then would the speed of the planes wheels match that of the conveyor...but in the opposite direction, and cancel eachother out? just like walking on a treadmill, you dont move unless you are moving slower or faster than the speen of the tread mill.

ok next. now wouldnt the turbine have to be placed in front of the wing to create some sort of lift on the wing? because if i remember right from 6th grade science....you need air above the wing moving faster than the air speed below to reduce pressure and create the "lighter than air" effect of lift on the wing that makes it take off. because there isnt any air speed outside to make any lift on the wings if the plane is at a stand still.

and how in the hell would a heavy ass plane just jump in the air from a stand still??? im so confused...

[SPANISH-RICE]

. it will definatly lift off. think of the turbine thrust as a rope pulling the plane instead of an engine pushing it forward. you pull the "rope" relative to wind speed, or being stationary compared to the conveyor belt. no matter how fast the conveyer belt under the plan is moving the plane will still get pulled forward by the rope, only the wheels will spin the speed of the forward movement and the backward movement combined.

might not have explained it the best but it makes sense to me

[bubba]

DrifterExtreme;199210 wrote:
ok yes it will take of no matter what the speed of the conveyor is going.

conveyor 50mph, then the plane wheels go 50mph when it is standing still. so when it is going say 200mph to generate enough lift to take so the wheels are going 200mph. now if you ad the speed of the conveyor going the opposite direction the wheel will be travling 250mph. and the plane will still take of no matter what the speed of the wheels and it is not the wheel that drive the plane it is the thrust from the jet engines.

now if a ged having high school drop out can answer this in a semi cohearent manner. how the fuck do you ppl not get how a plane works??????

+11ty billion...this is exactly what I was gonna say if it came down to it. Planes dont use their wheels to drive they use thrust...it's not like a car...

[KA-T_240]

the wheels on a plane are like the rear wheels on a FWD car. They are only there to support the rest of the car so it can do its job.

What I want to know. In the question, does the conveyor start moving when the airplane starts to move. Or does it start to move based on throttle perchentage. I believe the plane would take off. But, I dont know how to explain it, I have some thoughts in my head that it won't just dont know how to explain them.

question 2:

if you have a conveyor belt and a FWD car on well the rear wheels spin if the conveyor belt matchs the speed of the car attempting to drive on it?

[harm]

on a FWD car the wheels are going to go the same speed as the conveyor belt, and the car is going to sit still. the rear wheels aren't driven wheels, so they go the speed of the car minus the speed of the road, and the car sits still.

just like the plane is going to sit still and not take off, the way the question is worded.

If every bit of forward momentum gained is ripped away by a conveyor belt, the plane doesn't gather enough inertia to move, and if the plane doesn't move, it doesn't fly. we're talking "real" plane and "imaginary" conveyor belt, though.. real-world, we don't have a belt that can take this on. anything that gets set up to "test" in a real-world setting.. it'll probably fly. because the belt isn't going to be matching the plane's speed, just trying to catch up to the wheels.

[MisterCMK]

The plane takes off.

/thread

Joel, did you figure it out yet?

[Guest]

harm;199246 wrote:
the wheels are going to go the same speed as the conveyor belt, and the car is going to sit still.

Wait...what car?

just like the plane is going to sit still and not take off. I don't know how this is even a question.. or how the hell it got to 14 pages. No matter how damn fast the wheels are going.. I don't care.. eleventy-billion miles per hour.. if the conveyor belt is matching the same speed, opposite direction, the plane sits still and does not take off. It's all about lift.

The plane does NOT remain still. The riddle clearly states that it is moving forward

If this conveyor belt take-off theory worked, we wouldn't have runways anymore.. we'd have little take-off belts and slightly larger landing belts (those wouldn't work either because of inertia, it was a bad joke, don't analyze it) sitting outside the airport.

Because the plane is moving forward and will require the same length of runway whether it is a conveyor belt or not. The "trick" is that the conveyor belt is completely irrelevant and the plane overcomes it treating it as if it wasn't even there (except for wheels rotating twice as fast)

It doesn't work. Planes don't move because of their wheels. The engine isn't even attached to the wheels. and now I'm going to read the rest of this thread and laugh at it.

What scares me is that you understand that the wheels do nothing but provide a slippery surface for the plane to use while taxiing down the runway and have nothing to do with moving the plane...all they do is free roll, yet you can't comprehend that the plane moves forward irregardless of the conveyor.

Posts like this make me want to cry.

What part of the riddle makes you think the plane remains stationary?

A plane is standing on a runway that can move (some sort of band convey0r). The plane <u>moves</u> in one direction, while the conveyor moves in the opposite direction. This conveyor has a control system that tracks the plane speed and tunes the speed of the conveyor to be exactly the same (but in opposite direction).

Please explain to me the physics involved that would be required for a conveyor belt to hold a plane stationary. It is IMPOSSIBLE.

Ok, maybe you are referring to the alternate version of this riddle which states that the conveyor matches wheel speed in the opposite direction.....but wait, the only way to match the wheel speed would be for the conveyor and the plane to be traveling in the same direction (with the conveyor moving at 1/2 the speed of the plane which would mean the wheels would be spinning at 1/2 of their normal rate as well causing the conveyor and the wheels to be matched in speed) which certainly won't stop the plane from taking off either.

[harm]

little bit of friction x lot of speed.. the conveyor belt .. ah shit. i've mentioned i fail at morning posting.

okay okay.. as a riddle.. yes, the plane takes off. in my head in the morning, keeping the plane in one spot came from nowhere.

I will explain. If - the plane moves forward. good call. belt moves backward the same amount. wheels spin twice as fast. plane moves forward anyway.

haha, "part of this post makes me want to cry." I read it again and went.. yeah, that's gotta go. and I was still wrong. nice.

Plane moves at 5, belt moves at 5, plane takes off because it has wheels. and I'm sitting here groggy thinking "if the plane moves forward, the belt is just going to start tearing away until the friction in the wheels keeps it in one spot. that makes sense." =D heh.. thanks for waking me up.

[harm]

tjamz;199249 wrote:
Please explain to me the physics involved that would be required for a conveyor belt to hold a plane stationary. It is IMPOSSIBLE.

alright. for shits and giggles. the plane starts out, sitting still.

conveyor belt attempts to match the WHEEL speed. ends up going really damn fast. melts down the wheel bearings, because they aren't frictionless. wheels lock up. plane slows down. conveyor belt keeps trying to match the plane's speed without wheels.. and eats the plane away like a belt sander, causing the bits and pieces left to stand still.

ghetto physics. that's one tough conveyor belt.

[Guest]

harm;199246 wrote:
on a FWD car the wheels are going to go the same speed as the conveyor belt, and the car is going to sit still. the rear wheels aren't driven wheels, so they go the speed of the car minus the speed of the road, and the car sits still.

Forget about cars...that was a bad analogy by Faber.

just like the plane is going to sit still and not take off, the way the question is worded.
**
Nope, it says it matches the speed of the moving plane. Not the momentum/force. Only the speed. It doesn't say the plane is stopped from moving forward. **

If every bit of forward momentum gained is ripped away by a conveyor belt, the plane doesn't gather enough inertia to move, and if the plane doesn't move, it doesn't fly.

It does move, the question clearly states that

we're talking "real" plane and "imaginary" conveyor belt, though.. real-world, we don't have a belt that can take this on.
**
Mythbusters did, and the plane flies (real world) episode is on January 30th.**

anything that gets set up to "test" in a real-world setting.. it'll probably fly. because the belt isn't going to be matching the plane's speed, just trying to catch up to the wheels.

**Again, it was done w/ a 1/4 mile long piece of conveyor belt being pulled by a pickup at the same speed as the airplanes take off speed (ultralight plane, so takeoff speed wasn't too high). Both started moving at the same time and the plane achieved take off speeds and lifted off. How do I know this? Well, I watched the teaser clip from here:

(listen to what the pilot has to say) http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/mythbusters.html

then read the article here (read what they have to say about the pilot)

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/tv/11503366.html**

Think about this many many many people have changed their minds and said the plane will fly, no one (on any forum I've been on....and I've been on LOTS of them arguing this point) has ever (to my knowledge) switched to thinking it won't take off.

[JN210]

OR!!!, the plane can speed up to speed (about 200mph) and then the conveyor belt can just stop.....that should get the plane somewhere:icon_cheers:

[Guest]

harm;199251 wrote:
alright. for shits and giggles. the plane starts out, sitting still.

conveyor belt attempts to match the WHEEL speed. ends up going really damn fast. melts down the wheel bearings, because they aren't frictionless. wheels lock up. plane slows down. conveyor belt keeps trying to match the plane's speed without wheels.. and eats the plane away like a belt sander, causing the bits and pieces left to stand still.

ghetto physics. that's one tough conveyor belt.

LOL, if you get infinite speed treadmill, I get indestructible wheel bearings and tires. :icon_cheers:

[Guest]

JN210;199253 wrote:
OR!!!, the plane can speed up to speed (about 200mph) and then the conveyor belt can just stop.....that should get the plane somewhere:icon_cheers:

Wouldn't affect the plane at any more than if it kept on spinning.