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5 Comments
siftbotsays...Moving this video to aspartam's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.
GeeSussFreeKsays...Seen this awhile ago. I must say I don't understand the forces at work here. Seems to be a violation of the conservation of energy at work, but perhaps there is a more interesting argument proposed.
Tiversays...Gravity pushes the wheels onto the treadmill which causes them to spin. The wheels then turn the propeller fast enough to keep it traveling forward. There's no violation of conservation of energy. The treadmill is already using a bunch of electricity to run, placing the vehicle on it causes it to use slightly more as it now has a load. This is the same as if you tied the vehicle with a string, it has just replaced the string with a propeller instead.
It just requires a light enough vehicle, the right gearing from the wheels to the propeller, and a sufficiently sized propeller. There's nothing particularly special about this.
MaxWildersays...It would also require a "tail wind" in the exact direction of travel. Since it's pushing on air that is not moving the same speed and direction as the "road", it can piggyback off that "wind".
In other words, to duplicate this on a real road outdoors, you would need to travel in the same direction as the wind, and you could travel slightly faster than the wind. Maybe. The drag would probably counteract whatever push you got from wind.
GeeSussFreeKsays...But that doesn't seem to be the point. How can something go faster than they source of power provided. For instance, if you have something being pulled by a string, for it to overtake the thing pulling it on the string would be strange and some kinda violation of our understanding of conservation (there is a problem with this analogy because once the string goes loose there is no power, but that isn't how wind would work).
So that is my question...how can something travel to the power source.
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