Will an airplane on a treadmill take off?

Friday morning is as good a time as any to revisit what I consider one of the quintessential Kottke.org post(s), The case of the plane and conveyor belt. Essentially, will an airplane take off on a treadmill. Prompted by a question on The Straight Dope, the post, now over 7 years old, has everything you need for a Kottke.org post: airplanes, physics, a waffle, and careful consideration of the facts. The question was addressed again a few days later to definitively and succinctly put the argument to rest.

Now that I’ve closed the comments on the question of the airplane and the conveyor belt, I’m still getting emails calling me an idiot for thinking that the plane will take off. Having believed that after first hearing the question and formulating several reasons reinforcing my belief, I can sympathize with that POV, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was initially wrong and that if you believe the plane won’t take off, you’re wrong too.

A 2008 liveblog of an episode of Mythbusters, further cemented the following notion:

For what it’s worth commenters almost everywhere continue to disagree. For more opinions, see here, here, here, here.

• flyinh
• hbdjk
• physics
• science