Okay, here is the answer.

The plane will spontaneous combust!! [sm=smiley17.gif]

 

there will never be a sufficient test of this to satisfy both sides

to truly test this the bearings for the planes wheels would need to allow an infinite speed
the commercial for this episode shows them dragging a tarp under a plane with a truck
hardly matching wheel speed

i believe if a perfect test could be achieved with no drag created by wheel bearings it would neither stay stationary or take flight
the plane would move forward along the runway but would basically be dragging the wheels as if they were stationary since they continue rotating at the same speed as the "ground"

 

haha yeah, i'm human. i make mistakes and stuff... not afraid to admit that.

i'm not 100% convinced though. More like 80%... I could still make the other argument... but i'll just shaddup for now [:-]

 

Errrrr.... [:@]

Sorry dude but that makes no sense at all, and you totally contradicted yourself in that paragraph. If the wheel bearings have no drag, then what's gonna be slowing it down that would not allow it to get up to it's normal take off speed?? Do you know how much thrust an airplane engine produces?? Do you really think a wheel bearing drag is going to produce an equal or greater force than that produced by the engine?? Not gonna happen

 

smart guy right here

 

i was thinking the friction of the tires against the conveyor wouldn't allow it to move
ie the tire speed being matched by the conveyor

to me it would seem sort of like holding the wheels locked and trying to drag them along with the thrust of the motor/jet

i only brought up the wheel bearings not because of the friction of them holdingthe plane back but because they would fail if you could test this correctly

 

Nope....sorry. You're over analyzing the question big time. Unless you're holding the brakes on the plane, you're not gonna be dragging anything. Sure there's a tiny amount of rolling resistance from the bearings and tires, but it's nowhere close to the thrust produced by the engines. The tires are freespinning and will not affect the movement of the plane one bit unless you're holding the brakes. This is no different than if the plane were taking off on a normal asphalt runway.... only that the wheels are spinning faster, that's the only thing that's different. A plane only needs about 100mph to lift off, so the wheels would be spinning 200 mph. BIG DEAL! They're free spinning, who cares how fast they're going? The plane doesn't. Of course realistically the bearings and tires have limits, but this is a theoretical question (hence you're over analyzing), so none of that really matters. Ideally you could be spinning the tires at 10 million MPH and the plane will still accelerate and take off

 

forget about the tread mill for a second.

Put the plane on a frozen lake and lock the brakes. The planewill move forward whenpower is applied(sliding on slick surface), proving the tires have nothing to do with forward momentum.

For either experiment the planes would still need to achieve a certian speed for lift.

So the tires can be going 0 or 600 mph it wll fly once it hits speed.

 

the mythbusters show will be jan 30th... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSBFQ...eature=related

i found these on the net...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4owlyCOzDiE&NR=1

 

what have i done????????
remove the airplane from the equation,imagine a giant bow and arrow,the arrow is supported by a giant dolly,which is
sitting on a conveyer belt-now,load up the bow-then release the arrow-what happens????it will move
forward-wheel/conveyer belt speeds will be going nuts-but the arrow will move forward!!
thus-loaded/released bow=airplane engine
DO THE MATH!!
F**K IT!!LAY THE TITAN ROCKET ONTO A DOLLY-WICH WILL BE SITTING ON A CONVEYER BELT,LITE THAT SOB
OFF!!DO YOU REALLY THINK WHEEL SPEED HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT????