Plane on a conveyor revisited Options

[james]

Dragging up the past a bit - TV show Mythbusters ran it's much anticipated episode with a practical experiment version of this question on it a couple of nights ago over in the US.

I don't know when it will come on over here but for the curious Kottke liveblogged it and also links to another good explanation from a guy with a Sc.D. in Nuclear Science and Engineering (whatever that is).

And for the hard of attention and understanding - yes of course it takes off.

[Emily]

It took my a while to get this but there was one example that just explain it for me, because I could imagine the situation from real experiences.

In this example your not trying to take off, just get up to speed (as the plain would need to do to take off - getting air flowing over the wings etc)

here goes...

your on a treadmill (a long one), you've got skates on, imagine you have a rope attached to a wall a good distance in front of you and your treadmill reaches all the way to the wall.
the tread mill starts up and you have to hang onto the rope to stop yourself from being propelled backward. Your bored now and so you begin to pull yourself alone the rope expelling the used rope behind you - will you stay on the treadmill or will you be able to pull yourself alone it?