Quote:
Originally Posted by Burg Boxster
... You build a treadmill wide enough to accommodate a jet airplane's landing gear. You then put a jet on said treadmill and crank up speed so the jet's wheels/tires rotate as fast on this special treadmill as they would on a tarmac/runway during take-off. Does the jet take off? Of course not.
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And thanks for adding one of the classic engineering brain experiments to the mix. LOL. I've always contended that a model plane on a treadmill won't take off (it's not moving through the air, hince no pressure change and no lift) BUT you said jet. A jet engine moves air, so even if the wing isn't moving through a medium, the jet is moving air over the wing producing *some* lift. Would it be enough to take off? Doubtful, but reason would say that if it DID move enough volume of air to sufficiently reduce pressure, then lift would occur. Think of a model plane in a wind tunnel...the planes forward motion (same as with the treadmill) would be zero, but relative speed through the air would still create lift...theoretically if the fan in the wind tunnel was mounted on a sufficiently sized wing, it would lift itself. With that, back to our regularly scheduled programming...
