Brain Teaser - Aviators and Aviation Experts please read only

An aircraft is ready for take off and sits at the end of the runway. The runway however is a conveyor belt and is programmed to run backwards at twice the rate of the aircraft's ground speed.

Will the aircraft take off and fly?

No. That flight was cancelled which caused him to be late. He was able to rebook and continue on a later experiment.

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Depends on what the air is doing. So if it's a perfectly still day, the net effect is that the aircraft will be experiencing a tail-wind equal to its ground-speed:

Forward Speed = GS (GS=Ground Speed)
Conveyor Speed / Tail Wind = -2GS

Air Speed = Forward Speed + Tail Wind = -GS

In this case, the aircraft won't take-off.

Not quite. Lift is generated by the relative motion of air over a wing. It's perfectly possible (and happens sometimes with light aircraft parked on the apron) for a strong wind to cause a stationary aircraft to lift. It's also how they do wind tunnel testing...the aerofoil section is stationary and they blow air over it.

The wheels of a plane are free spinning so the force exerted by the conveyor belt on the plane itself is minimal since there is little friction in the wheels to transfer the force back to the plane, thus the force from the engines is the dominate force and the plane will fly like normal.


And now i feel the need to go rewatch that mythbusters.

If the jet engines are not going then it is going nowhere despite what conveyor belt speed as the wheels of the plane are freewheeling (with only brakes) so it will just site there ... unless you put the brakes on in which cas it will shoot backward pushing the plane backwards to the beginning of the runway (or nunway) where it will crash off the start of the conveyor belts.

I think you screwed the question up.

Next time be more specific so there are less variables.