Science Squabbling

No...

does it have a pilot?

does it have a pilot?

Roger.

NO you need wind / movement flowing over the wings to create lift

drag thrust
lift gravity
the four forces that cause flight or not to flight

yes.

it can.

there's still air movement.

wings create lift. not engine create flight.

http://kottke.org/08/01/mythbusters-airplane-on-a-conveyor-belt

bam.

YouTube- Paul McCartney- Band on the Run

Also is Science Squabble Ed's Dad?

Can god make a rock that even *(s)he *can't life?

yes.

it can.

there's still air movement.

But there's no air flowing over the wing, numbnuts...

Can god make a rock that even *(s)he *can't life?

Let me know.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/rock.html

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2638/an-airplane-taxies-in-one-direction-on-a-moving-conveyor-belt-going-the-opposite-direction-can-the-plane-take-off

mythbusters also answered that question about the plane.

see my first link which is a live blog of that mythbusters episode.

I still call BS... Don't see how you could generate any lift without any air flow over/under the wing... Show me the proof... With a real plane on a mahoosive conveyer belt... ;P

"Once the pilot fires up the engines, the plane moves forward at pretty much the usual speed relative to the ground--and more importantly the air--regardless of how fast the conveyor belt is moving backward. This generates lift on the wings, and the plane takes off"

With regard to energy, how about we catch all the animals and put them in a giant hamster wheel?

But there's no air flowing over the wing, numbnuts...

That's what I thought Joe, but there is. The jet engines or propellers are still on, pulling the air from in front of the plane and ejecting it out of the back of it.

It is the planes propulsion that triggers the conveyor belt to move in the opposite direction, not the other way round. The conveyor belt is mainly powered by the force of the engines, transmitted through the wheels. it is then augmented by an auxillary motor, to overcome any frictional loss and ensure the plane does not move forward or backward in the frame of reference of the observer.

So yes, there is air movement over the wings. I don't think this is made clear enough in the the description given above.

mashto, you don't understand.
Its because planes work as antimagnets and the gravity effect is negated.

google it.

What about the Monty Hall problem, which is one of my favourites, popularised in the Curious Incident of the Dog and the Night Time:

You are on a game show where there are three closed boxes, two of which contain a Unipac and one of which contains a Robin Mather, custom built to your specification. You pick a box. The host (VB?) opens one of the other boxes and shows you a Unipac inside it. Is it in your favour to change the box that you picked, to stick with your original choice, or does it not make any difference?

As I understood the water going in has not been heated. He used an electric starter motor to start the drum spinning and once it had reached a certain rpm the water vapourised almost instantly which then increased the pressure further and began to turn the drum under its own energy.

The water is pumped into some form of hollow cylindrical container, presumably at a set pressure. Inside the container is a solid cylindrical drum, on the surface of the drum are dimples. These have to be at a precise circumference, depth and spacing as does the clearence between container and drum or this will not work.

hummmm.

So the inner dimpled cylinder is still, and the drum it is contained within is turning? Or the other way round? But they are at least turning relative to one-another?

As the water passes the dimples, there will be some rapid changes of pressure to make the water change speed and direction to flow in and out of the dimples. If somewhere in that the pressure gets low enough, the water can cavitate - form a bubble of 'steam' i.e. water vapour. But this steam is at very low pressure and is not (yet) hot. If you reduce the pressure enough water boils at room temperature (which is what is happening here on a small scale), and in the process of boiling actually cools the liquid it is boiling from.

When the bubble of steam moves out of the low pressure region of the flow, it rapidly collapses, compressing and so heating the steam in the bubble then creating a violent shock as the bubble snaps out of existence. (Wikipedia says it better.)

So far there is no gain of energy: all that has happened is some of the work done spinning the cylinders has been focused for an instant into the tiny point that is the collapsing bubble. But the collapsing bubbles can do weird things http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence and some people think that they are getting hot enough to cause nuclear fusion, or are tapping into vacuum energy. I'm un-qualified to evaluate vacuum energy, but highly suspicious of it - if it's so easy why isn't it a more obvious feature of the universe? The idea that the machine is creating enough nuclear fusion to actually heat up and properly boil the water is rubbish. If it was really doing that surely it would be spewing out so much radiation that all the experimenters would be dead? Look up Farnsworth Fusors - they can actually do tiny amounts of fusion, but look at all the precautions the experimenters take when they do fusion runs.

Have you seen this thing up and running with all power-sources disconnected, and actually pouring out hot steam from cold water?

Another possibility is that water between the cylinders is all at a low enough pressure that the cavitation bubbles don't collapse, and instead grow to fill the whole space. This reduces the drag on the cylinders, so they can suddenly turn much faster, keep going with much less effort from the motor, or even idle for a while with no input energy. But in this case there is no hot steam pouring out.

What about the Monty Hall problem, which is one of my favourites, popularised in the Curious Incident of the Dog and the Night Time:

You are on a game show where there are three closed boxes, two of which contain a Unipac and one of which contains a Robin Mather, custom built to your specification. You pick a box. The host (VB?) opens one of the other boxes and shows you a Unipac inside it. Is it in your favour to change the box that you picked, to stick with your original choice, or does it not make any difference?

one of my friends wrote a dissertation on this.
I think he came to the conclusion that it was always worth changing your mind due to some sort of fraction or ratio he derived. I'd go look, but I can't be fucked. Bloody mathematicians
Anyway, everyone knows- unipac> Mather.

But the collapsing bubbles can do weird things http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence and some people think that they are getting hot enough to cause nuclear fusion, or are tapping into vacuum energy. I'm un-qualified to evaluate vacuum energy, but highly suspicious of it - if it's so easy why isn't it a more obvious feature of the universe?

Pistol shrimp does that sonoluminescence thing with its claw.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistol_shrimp#Snapping_effect

Here's an interesting NASA article on the earth's magnetic field: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/29dec_magneticfield.html

kin ell, elguapo had nooooo idea what he started with the time travel thread........

one of my friends wrote a dissertation on this.
I think he came to the conclusion that it was always worth changing your mind due to some sort of fraction or ratio he derived. I'd go look, but I can't be fucked. Bloody mathematicians
Anyway, everyone knows- unipac> Mather.

A whole dissertation? Wow. The treatment that I am most familiar with fits on a napkin.