SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
Holy crap, I think my head's going to explode! 
Poll: Mythbusters - Will the plane take off?
- Thread starter TheAlchemist
- Start date
Stone Cold
Well-Known Member
I seriously need to show my wife these threads to show how I'm not such a geek!!!
:bandit:
:bandit:
TheAlchemist
Well-Known Member
Sorry for the typo Mister Scientist :buck: . I wish I could be more like you. :bandit:
I voted NO. Read my posts from yesterday before you say that we who voted no are just BS'ing.
Then someone said that plane would have room to move forward on the treadmill.
I posted:
Stomp16
You mean Shennanigans?!?!
Didn't they have an experiment in the past where they wanted to see if they rotated the wheels fast enough, while keeping the aircraft in a fixed position, that the plane would become airborne? That's where I became confused. I thought they were doing the same experiment again. I didn't vote, but I would have said no due to not understanding the experiment when it was first posed. I sat there the entire time and said that there was no way it was going to take-off due to no airflow over the wings. Then, when they finally did the experiment, the aircraft was not left in a fixed position but allowed to take-off. That changed the entire experiment. At first, I thought they completely messed up it up. After seeing it, it was clear what the experiment was and that the aircraft would take-off. It was a very poorly worded question and I can see why people were confused.
On a side note, to those few of you that have your head buried so far up your own butt and can't see why people would become confused, you need to calm down. Nobody's world view is the same and obviously people interpret things differently. Congratulations on interpreting the experiment correctly, yeah for you and here's your warm fuzzy.
I know a few fellow pilots that will not post on this forum because they don't want to be ridiculed for a question they might have, sometimes, that includes me. Everybody has to learn somehow, and a few of you don't help at all. All you do in a round-about way is put them down while trying to build yourself up. Constructive criticism goes a long way in helping people learn. If you don't want to help, DON'T POST.
On a side note, to those few of you that have your head buried so far up your own butt and can't see why people would become confused, you need to calm down. Nobody's world view is the same and obviously people interpret things differently. Congratulations on interpreting the experiment correctly, yeah for you and here's your warm fuzzy.
I know a few fellow pilots that will not post on this forum because they don't want to be ridiculed for a question they might have, sometimes, that includes me. Everybody has to learn somehow, and a few of you don't help at all. All you do in a round-about way is put them down while trying to build yourself up. Constructive criticism goes a long way in helping people learn. If you don't want to help, DON'T POST.
The airplane will never remain stationary, at one point, relative to the ground, regardless of the speed of the treadmill. The wheels do not have any power. This scenario only works, in a car, where the power is in the wheels, and they match the speed of the treadmill. The car will remain stationary.
The airplane is being pulled through the air, by the propeller. If the airplane requires 500 ft., to take off, the treadmill can be moving in the opposite direction, at 1,000 mph, or match the airplane's takeoff speed, of 60 mph, and the airplane will still travel 500 ft., relative to the ground. The only difference will be the speed at which the wheels are turning, i.e, 1,060 mph, or 120 mph. If you were standing at a distance, and didn't know that there was a moving treadmill there, it would look like a normal takeoff.
GatorFC
Well-Known Member
Man, I took a gander at some of those threads over there, and I had to stop. I saw your screen name over there, KC Jake. Is that you? If it is, can you post the links to the two YouTube videos posted upthread of the father and son who did their own experiment on a treadmill?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EopVDgSPAk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4owlyCOzDiE
A lot of the Mythbuster forum posters are saying that the plane went faster than the treadmill. :laff: The YouTube videos above show the treadmill going faster than the little plane on it can even fly yet it still moves forward. Hopefully that will make them STFU.
I doubt it, though. 
tonyw
Well-Known Member
The YouTube videos above show the treadmill going faster than the little plane on it can even fly yet it still moves forward. Hopefully that will make them STFU.
Nope.
Natural selection has been eliminated from the human race and so, people who would have been eaten by predators now survive to pass their inferior genetic material on to future generations.
All the evidence you need is on the mythbusters website.
Clocks
Well-Known Member
tonyw just flamed the entire human species. And I agree with his assessment.
LoadMasterC141
Well-Known Member
I missed that but I too thought the plane would not be moving forward on the treadmill as part of the premise. I am still a little unclear on the whole thing as I really thought the idea was for the plane only to create enough thrust to hold itself in one relative position.
Clocks
Well-Known Member
If the myth was worded "Can a plane that is not producing enough thrust to move forward take off", I wonder how many people would have voted yes
LoadMasterC141
Well-Known Member
Yeah I screwed up because looking back at it, I guess it is clear.
TheGirlinPurple
Well-Known Member
I miss interpreted the question. My argument was the treadmill will not make the aircraft takeoff. I thought they were trying to make the treadmill the propulsion system. That was my argument before the show none the less. The airplane still takes off in it's normal takeoff range under it's own power.
In this interpretation the no is the correct answer. Those that are posting negative comments to "no" voters need to understand that the question can be interpreted in different ways. There is no simple yes or no to this question. 90% of life's questions have no simple yes or no.
On a side note, Mythbusters is not a scientific show. It is purely entertainment. They do not take in account all angles, just the angles they see and can fit in a 30 min or 1 hour segment. (Need I bring up the chicken at an airplane windshield segment?) A yes or no from them should not be taken as gold.
In this interpretation the no is the correct answer. Those that are posting negative comments to "no" voters need to understand that the question can be interpreted in different ways. There is no simple yes or no to this question. 90% of life's questions have no simple yes or no.
On a side note, Mythbusters is not a scientific show. It is purely entertainment. They do not take in account all angles, just the angles they see and can fit in a 30 min or 1 hour segment. (Need I bring up the chicken at an airplane windshield segment?) A yes or no from them should not be taken as gold.
thepedroid
Well-Known Member
I love this thread. I didn't vote, however I would have voted NO. The question was confusing but it makes perfect sense why the plane would take off after reading this thread. I fell asleep during the commercial segment right before the full scale test so I didn't get to see the results. The smaller scale test made me a believer. I think they should have done it with a float plane going upstream. That way they could have had a better estimate on the speed of the current although they would have had to factor in the additional drag from the floats.
ian
Well-Known Member
i cant believe that people still say it wont take off, even after they showed the whole difference between how a plane moves and how a car moves.....and people are still in denial saying "oh its a faulty test" "it was a tarp moving not a treadmill" blah blah blah...the plane took off...accept it and get over it
MidlifeFlyer
Well-Known Member
I was disappointed. I always thought the myth involced the treadmill's and the airplane's wheelspeed being identical.
I dont see anything that was measuring whe airplane's wheelspeed. All I saw was an airplane accelerate until it reached takeoff AIRspeed (more likelly until reaching a point at which lift was generated suffiently to make contact with the ground irrelevant) while a treadmill rotated in the opposite direction at a fixed speed that was chosen by reference to the airplane's takeodd speed, but was otherwise irrelevant.
That was to be expected and didn't really determine the truth or falsity of the "myth" as I understood it.
The model airplane didn't mean much to me. I would expect the propwash alone from one of those to be enough to generate the necessary lift. But when I saw the real airplane begin to move forward on the ground relative to the Earth, I wa disappointed that the experiment didn't prove anything I wanted to see.
I dont see anything that was measuring whe airplane's wheelspeed. All I saw was an airplane accelerate until it reached takeoff AIRspeed (more likelly until reaching a point at which lift was generated suffiently to make contact with the ground irrelevant) while a treadmill rotated in the opposite direction at a fixed speed that was chosen by reference to the airplane's takeodd speed, but was otherwise irrelevant.
That was to be expected and didn't really determine the truth or falsity of the "myth" as I understood it.
The model airplane didn't mean much to me. I would expect the propwash alone from one of those to be enough to generate the necessary lift. But when I saw the real airplane begin to move forward on the ground relative to the Earth, I wa disappointed that the experiment didn't prove anything I wanted to see.
thepedroid
Well-Known Member
I just think it would have been cooler on a river. I don't think that the results would have changed. physics are physics, planes take off the way planes take off. I asked several friends of mine what they thought and everyone I spoke to said it wouldn't fly. They were wrong as was I. After all is said and done, it was a really cool experiment.
Clocks
Well-Known Member
The point continues to be that the treadmill's impact on the airplane is almost zero. The speed (slightly below takeoff speed, exactly at wheel speed, or 50 times greater than wheel speed) is irrelevant. Friction is a function of weight (normal force * a coefficient). Velocity is tellingly missing from the equation.