A Fun Controversy, for a change 415

There are all sorts of resistances 1) there is friction in the wheel bearings, 2) there is friction between the tires and the threadmill surface 3) there is resistance in the deformation of the tires And the faster the threadmill rolls, the greater these resistances. And paragraph 2 states that the threadmill will adjust it's speed to ANY forward thrust that the plane may generate, by rolling so fast that the resulting resistance is equal to the forward thrust

No magic needed No brakes needed No glue of any kind needed Just the ability to read the problem and understand that physics applicable.

Here is a simpler variant

You have a humongous skateboard, to which you have strapped an engine that can run a propeller at any speed. You have a threadmill that can support the "loaded skateboard" and any speed up to infinity You now attach a simple pulley wheel to the front of the threadmill frame You now attach a cable to the front of your skateboard, then you run the cable over the pulley wheel and then attach a pan into which you can throw a great number of weights. So now we have a pan hanging vertically on one side of the wheel, from a cable that is attached horizontally to the skateboard, that is sitting on the rolling surface of the threadmill We now turn on the threadmill to speed A1. To prevent the skateboard from being carried back, we drop enough weight, W1, into the pan to create equilibrium Repeat for equal increments of speed. Let's say A1 to A99 This will give us weight results of W1 to W99. If you plot these numbers, you will most probably get something quite close to a straight line.

Now the weights in the pan are the equivalent of the thrust of using an engine to push the skateboard forward instead of pulling it forward with the weighted cable. To demonstrate how this is true. All you need to do is turn on the engine (remember that from MY original definition), to generate thrust equal to one of the weights. To get (threadmill) speed A1, you will generate thrust W1 to keep the skateboard unmoving in the same spot in the threadmill To get speed A2, you will generate thrust W2 To get speed A99, you will generate thrust W99. And all other factors remaining constant, you will find that this will hold true.

By the way, this is a typical experiment done in a Physics 201 clbutt studying dynamics, resistance and forces.

You keep bringing all this irrelevant stufff into play. Totally no reason for it.