Something amazing to tell you concerning physics and motion

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Originally Posted by Silock

My car doesn't have rockets strapped to the roof. If it did, a treadmill wouldn't do a damn thing to keep it in place, even if the speedometer were reading "0".

Originally Posted by KC Fish

The conveyor belt is totally irrelevant compared to the dynamics of flight.

The plane's jets push air in the opposite direction. The air that is pushed in the opposite direction of the plane is not affected by the ground. The only thing the tires do is hold the plane off the ground until a sufficient amount of air is pushed behind the plan to gain lift from the airflow over the shape of the wings.

A care pushes the ground in the opposite direction. Completely totally different.

It simply does not matter. If you're moving forward while in contact with the ground, your wheels are turning. ALL of your forward motion on the ground goes through the wheels. And ALL of it will be negated by a treadmill which can spin freely.

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Troy Allen • Jan 30 2008 • 10:53PM
I am completely disappointed at Mythbusters handling of this experiment. The science they used and the “explanations” were both completely flawed. The original myth, and ALL of the discussion, centered around one central conceit: The plane would have NO FORWARD MOTION RELATIVE TO THE GROUND because of the conveyor belt matching the speed of the plane. NOT the “speed of the WHEELS of the plane” or any other contrived version.

Of course the plane is going to take off if it has enough forward motion RELATIVE TO THE GROUND to create the Bernoulli effect required to lift the wing because of the airflow over the wing.

I really expected more “science” from MythBusters. They almost explained it properly with the “model car example”. I guess it was the original Myth that was flawed, or my understanding of the Myth. I guess in their mind the myth is that no plane on a conveyor belt can take off if the “speeds are matching in opposite directions”. That is far too simplistic to make a determination, so it is flawed from the get-go.

Those of us who claimed the plane would not take off without forward motion relative to the ground due to the laws of physics are still correct. The planes both had significant forward motion relative to the ground. I just hope everyone involved in the debate understands these distinctions, otherwise this will just dumb down the TV watching public a bit more. It sure was fun though!