Hell Yeah the Plane Takes Off

Ken — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:10:20 +0000

For fans of kottke.org and/or Mythbusters, I'm sure you were very interested in last night's Mythbusters episode, where they attempted to answer the old "plane on a conveyor belt" question. I've blogged about it before, but here's the problem again, in case you haven't seen it:

A plane is standing on a runway that can move (some sort of band conveyer). The plane moves in one direction, while the conveyer moves in the opposite direction. This conveyer has a control system that tracks the plane speed and tunes the speed of the conveyer to be exactly the same (but in the opposite direction). Can the plane take off?

The answer is, as Kottke put it, "HELL YEAH THE PLANE TAKES OFF". Mythbusters demonstrably proved it, not just with a model airplane on a miniature conveyor, but with a real airplane sitting on a giant sheet of tarp, being pulled by a truck in an opposite direction of the airplane.