Yes, such a comparison would be nonsense, and that is probably why I never made any such comparison. What I did compare was the treadmills themselves, making the observation that the modified "force treadmill" largely eliminates belt variations due to the belt itself (with nobody walking on it) going around the end cylinders. The variations would be tiny, and are of no concern during normal treadmill usage, but may be large enough to influence the behaviour of the equally tiny cart on the belt. It is possible that very slight back and forth accelerations on the belt may act in the manner of a vibratory conveyor, in sending the cart up the belt. It is a possibility that cannot be discounted.
As evidence of DDWFTTW? No I would not. If there can be assurance the belt is not under going any accelerations at all, I would have to discount the possibility of the cart being shuffled up the belt due to such accelerations. That still would not convince me of the treadmill equivalency because a power analysis says the cart cannot power itself up the belt, powered by the belt in any normal fashion. If the "vibratory conveyor" possibility is eliminated, then I would have to consider other possibilities.
I have already alluded to one of those possibilities when I pasted that photo of the (cylindrical) lawn mower. If you have ever used one you would know that sometimes when you push on it, instead of cutting the grass it rides up over the top of the grass. The wheels still spin and the cylinder still spins but it is cutting no grass and it is much easier to push than when it is cutting. The cart, after being held on the belt and allowed to spin up and develop thrust, can be doing something similar to that lawn mower. It can just be scooting along the belt, very lightly in contact with the belt, running on the built-up thrust and only gaining a tiny bit of energy from the belt to keep the thrust topped up, so to speak. It is not rolling up the belt and drawing full power and thus feeling full drag, just lightly riding over the top of the belt in a similar manner to the lawn mower that has ridden up on the grass. It is a possibility that should be investigated. Perhaps a strobe light would shed a bit of light on the issue?
To your first paragraph, multiple carts on multiple treadmills built by multiple observers with completely different modes of vibrations does in fact eliminate this as a reasonable hypothesis of cart transport. If you had ever done any vibration analysis, you would be very convinced that this is not a viable theory. Different styles of functioning carts all only share one common trait, once they achieve a certain propeller speed (slightly different for each cart which reflects minor build differences), they all go up the treadmill at any speed of the treadmill above that speed. This alone eliminates the vibration analysis theory since these vastly different carts will have totally different modes of resonant frequencies. (incidentally, since the belt does not change speed in any continuous way, you could indeed characterize this as a "vibration hypothesis" as vibration is small positive and negative accelerations.)
The lawnmower seems to be a rather tortured comparison. When someone is pushing it you basically just stated that it is easier to push when it is not doing the work of cutting the grass!
No disagreement here but I can't see your analogy in any way that this relates to the cart.
It doesn't do your credibility any good the way you duck and weave on the TM questions. You make a lot of posts when you think you have a point but you go awfully silent when someone asks a simple question which shoots that point completely down. It's certainly hard to entertain other far-fetched theories when you won't respond to defend your points on the simpler ones.
WindGrins
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