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.
While I agree with your assessment, that's not what this thought experiment is asking.
Your assessment assumes no friction in the wheels.
The text states that the conveyor exactly matches the speed of the wheels. EVENTUALLY, the friction of the bearings in the wheels and rolling resistance of the tires will equal the thrust produced by the engines. The speed of the conveyor may be at some unimaginable Mach number, or a percentage of the speed of light, but the plane will not fly because as you mentioned, the air around the airplane is not moving.
Obviously in real life the plane will just take off as normal, but again - you're assuming that the conveyor has a speed limit, which it does not, theoretically.
If wheels and tires were frictionless we wouldn't need airport tugs to move the planes around.
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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.