True but a slightly diferent case.

 

Yall are dead wrong. The plane is going to burn to the ground from the friction caused by the tires on the conveyor belt. There. Problem solved.

 

there are way too many assumptions each of us are taking to arrive at our conclusions.

one last analogy:
you are wearing roller blades and standing on a treadmill. there is a really, really long rope that you hold on to and begin to pull (this is a better physical representation of the prop pulling on the air). as you begin to pull ,the wheels on your rollerblades begin to accelerate and gain speed in a clockwise fashion but instantaneously the treadmill (conveyor) acts in the "opposite direction of rotation" or counterclockwise.(think of two gears meshed together, one rotates one way and the other acts instantaneously the opposite direction of rotation) so your wheels speed up more because the conveyor speeds up, and this continues to increase exponentially. BUT, you relative to the-ground-the-treadmill-is-sitting on-are still accelerating and creating airflow around you.

NOW, if the spinning of the wheels is assumed to create such a drag that it withstands the force of you pulling on the rope then yes you will NOT move. but i didnt take that as a reasonable assumption...the wheels would blow up way before they could withstand that force (in the airplane scenario). why not keep the brakes on the wheels and assume we have enough engine power to drag the wheels up-to-speed to take off?

with my assumptions above, it would take off.

BUT, if you believe the speed of the conveyor counteracts the linear speed of the wheel then we have this situation:
everytime the wheel trys to speed up the conveyor counteracts it and the wheel speed remains at zero and does the conveyor (because its dependent on wheel speed) then no lift or flight occurs. physically possible? no. on paper? yes.

again, i based my view off of the wording of "opposite direction of ROTATION"

good debate. glad to see this one isnt locked up yet...


AFTER ALL, we could ASSUME this is a Harrier!

 

I messed up see below

 

If the treadmill was set up to match the speed of the wheels perfectly and exactly,
As you pulled your wife towards you With the rope ( plane engine) it would make wheels go faster and also the treadmill? I would think she would stay in the same place. BUT!!! The length of the rope would get shorter as you pulled her towards you producing forward movement. Somehow that foward movement was created ! I think the plane would take off.

I have been back and forth on this question all night. The scenario that JrKerns brought up made me decide that it would eventually fly. It is however, going to need new tires. And Jr is going to be spending the week in the dog house

 

So the question then becomes, where do we bury the survivors??

 

The real question is:
Did Hoss pour the concrete runway that the conveyor belt is sitting on?

~Rob

 

You guys keep making it harder than what it should be, all these what if's and what nots. No matter how fast the wheels go, the conveyor will match the speed, as said in the problem. No matter if that means light spead, right Mr. Warf? So the plane will never move. Gravity is still holding the plane in place because you have not created any lift in order to take the wheels out of the equation.

Sorry for the ones that will think it will fly. I am selling seats on a plane just as described above, destination is nowhere.

 

While everyone was trying to figure this out, the plane has already taken off, flown around and landed, the pilots are at the bar in the lounge with me.

 

no difference

 

next to the house with a egg-laying rooster on the roof

 

My Texas fishing buddies are a lot smarter than y'all are.

 

is 'cause they're from TEXAS !!!!

 

Hoss has it right.....THE PLANE WON'T FLY!!!! (Unless I am somewhere missing that it is a Harrier VTO jet). The thrust is just for propulsion to gain and maintain AIRSPEED. Just imagine a force causing the plane to lift off of the conveyor belt (or for that matter think of it "hitting a bump in the belt"). It is now just "hanging there" or levitating. Heavy objects don't levitate for long. While you can argue that once it leaves the belt, the thrust starts to propel it forward, there is no way that plane will exceed, or for that matter even START to approach STALL SPEED. Result.....SPLAT! Why do you think we have RUNWAYS???
Inversely, you could fly a plane without even starting the engines (or for that matter, WITHOUT engines (think GLIDER) as long as you had a good strong (and preferably steady) headwind, and as long as you had a means of keeping the plane from being moved along with the windflow (such as a tether). Your plane would probably be concidered a manned kite. In this case, it would not matter if it were on a conveyor, and if the belt were moving forward or backwards. It is ALL about AIRSPEED.

 

yes but, even though you have wheels on the plane to "break the friction, no matter how fast you turn them, the conveyor is equally acting against them, thus no movement by the plane. The plane has to move on the wheels untill lift is created, and since it has to move on the wheels till the lift is created, it will never take off because the wheels are always staying in one spot because the conveyor is not allowing them to gain any ground.