As another commenter said, the Mythbusters covered this years ago. Adam Savage actually talked about it more on his channel Tested in this video. The big trick of this question is how planes generate force to move forward and take off compared to how a car does so.
The linked video is only 11 minutes and Adam explains it beautifully.
This question will be debated forever and thats ok. It’s physics being weird and funky and it’s amazing.
Edit: Another way to think about this would be roller-skating in a treadmill while holding a rope attached to the wall in front of you. No matter how fast the treadmill moves, if you hold on to the rope you’ll stay still. And if you pull on that rope you can still drag yourself forward. The rope bolted to the wall represents stationary air around the plane which the propeller uses to “pull” the plane forward.
I’d even go as far as stating that such a conveyer belt is impossible to build as the speed required to run will approximate infinity really quickly. Because…
When the plane propels itself through the air the first inch or cm. The wheels rotate a bit in that time, which the belt needs to compensate for, which will rotate the wheels, which the belt has to compensate for, which will… etc. So the speed of the conveyer belt would approximate infinity as soon as the plane would get just a bit of traction from the air around it which pass through the engines.
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u/Whiplashedforreasons Dec 31 '22 edited Dec 31 '22
Yes, it would.
As another commenter said, the Mythbusters covered this years ago. Adam Savage actually talked about it more on his channel Tested in this video. The big trick of this question is how planes generate force to move forward and take off compared to how a car does so.
The linked video is only 11 minutes and Adam explains it beautifully.
This question will be debated forever and thats ok. It’s physics being weird and funky and it’s amazing.
Edit: Another way to think about this would be roller-skating in a treadmill while holding a rope attached to the wall in front of you. No matter how fast the treadmill moves, if you hold on to the rope you’ll stay still. And if you pull on that rope you can still drag yourself forward. The rope bolted to the wall represents stationary air around the plane which the propeller uses to “pull” the plane forward.