pjabrony t1_ist70za wrote
Reply to comment by corrado33 in TIL: Airplanes take off and land into the wind. They takeoff into the wind to reduce the groundspeed required to lift and land into it to reduce groundspeed when landing. by Key-Code-4296
Much like the Monty Hall Problem, the "airplane-on-a-treadmill" problem creates controversy because of how the problem is defined.
If you had a proper runway of proper runway length, but you turned it into a treadmill, that would not affect the takeoff of the airplane because it doesn't care how fast its wheels are spinning for takeoff purposes.
But, if you just had a treadmill the length of the airplane and you tried to use that to allow the airplane to get up to speed so it could take off without a long runway, that would not work.
Doggydog123579 t1_isu56qh wrote
The second interpretation does not make physical sense as the plane will immediately leave the treadmill. The only way to make that short of treadmill work is to put it in a wind tunnel, at which point the airplane takes off anyways.
It creates controversy because people think the wheels are important to it moving, not because of the treadmill size.
pjabrony t1_isu9abt wrote
> The second interpretation does not make physical sense as the plane will immediately leave the treadmill.
I understand that, but I think not everyone does which is why there's a question.
Put it this way: if you put a car on a treadmill, which does operate by the wheels' grip on the road, and you spun the wheels and the treadmill up to high speed, the car wouldn't have gone anywhere. Then say you quick-stop the treadmill. Would the car take off at a high speed? Could you get a lower zero-to-sixty time this way?
swolypinger t1_it09zil wrote
Most likely the wheels wouldn't have enough grip at high rpms to do anything other than wheelspin until they had slowed down a bit.
That's the same reason f1 drivers dont just slam on the gas at the statt of a race, they would just burnout and go nowhere
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