Weeble ([info]clockworksaint) wrote,
@ 2008-12-14 01:18:00
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Machines
Turns out my complicated theoretical machine for moving faster than the piece of wood pushing it was orders of magnitude more complicated than required to demonstrate the principle. Try this instead:



(Found via Boing Boing.)

I'm pretty confident now that the downwind-faster-than-the-wind thing is possible.

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[info]gorkempacaci
2008-12-14 03:57 pm UTC (link)
I'm not sure about the actual downwind-faster-than-the-wind thing, but I don't think this proves that can be true.

Here, when the 'experimentor' moves the ruler to right, two things happen:
1) the ruler triggers the big wheel to turn clockwise. The big wheel triggers the smaller wheels to turn anticlockwise. But it can't move that way because frictions ruler/bigwheel and smallwheels/ground are in inverse ways. If the experimentor would press less downwards, one of the frictions would win and either car would stay still or it would slide on its wheels.
2) there's also a friction between the shafts of smaller wheels and the smaller wheels, and the force of the ruler moving forward wins against this friction. At the end, the car isn't moving on ground in twice the speed of ruler. Instead, the car is moving 'on' ruler in the same speed as ruler, which won't be valid in the wind-case because the sail gives us only one reference point.

Of course you can attach a horizontal ruler-like thing to the bottom of the sail, and assuming that the sail can gather enough force from the wind to pull the system forward the same speed as wheel, the actual car under the ruler attached to sail would go twice as fast, until the car reaches the end of horizontal ruler attached to the sail. But I don't think a sail can reach the speed of wind until it's large enough to cover all the wind.

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