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Split Thread The validity of classical physics (split from: DWFTTW)

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Replace "cameras" with eyes; in fact that is exactly what a camera attempts to do!
Exactly. Try to argue that point should you get a speeding fine.
The camera, like you, infers velocity. "Optical illusions" are examples of that failure. To say that when is a car, the road is going "backwards" is one of them. If you look out of the windscreen it is "coming towards you", though you are actually traveling over the road.

I can't lend you my eyes; the best I can do is record what either of us would see if we were right behind the cart watching what was happening in both cases. It's up to you to see what is happening.
Of course. But they would be our interpretations. The diagrams try to avoid that. I am quite sure I have stuck to the rules in each case, Mender.

In real wind, the smoke from a flare placed on the road some distance ahead, will flow with the appropriate velocities for both the driving and boundary flows.
Traveling along that road, towards that flare, would mean that you would run into that smoke sometime in the future. But what happens if both the smoke and cart are exactly at windspeed? The smoke would always be ahead of you, except for the fact the laminar flow is slower, allowing you to gain on it. The relative or apparent speed of that flow when you catch up to it, may be small. It may just drift by.

This is not what happens on the belt. Smoke from the future, would pass by you, at full essentially windspeed, in the opposite direction no matter what. This is partly due to a nest of errors, but also because there is no 'distance' on the belt. Motion is seen as velocity or displacement but the two never meet.

Are you saying a video wouldn't constitute sufficient evidence?

It's conditional, Mender. If there are secondary means to support what is demonstrated, direct indicators of velocity perhaps.Then so much the better, Without that, it becomes very uncertain.
You can see this sort of thing on Mythbusters. For example, they use striped panels in the background, as evidence of displacement.
 
Humber, let's get beck to basics. After all these posts, you still haven't presented a clear argument (at least, not clear to us) as to why the treadmill-with-no-wind and road-with-wind ituations aren't the same.
Whaaat!.

Currently, you're enthusiastically advancing your boundary layer idea, which everyone but you percieves as clearly mistaken. The strange part is, even if you are right, the effects of this on the cart would be small enough not to invalidate the treadmill model.
Enthusiastically?
No, definitely not small. It is the one thing that cannot be dismissed by talk. It is concrete evidence, the tip of an underlying iceberg, Brian-M

I'd like to know exactly where our views differ, and how. In order to achieve this, I'm going to set up a hypothetical situation, and gradually alter it step by step, explaining the expected outcome as I go.

What I want you to do is point out exactly where you disagree with my expected outcome, and tell me what you think would happen in that instance, and why.
Okilly Dokilly

Stage 1: Run the cart in a wind-tunnel

You've already stated on several occasions that a wind-tunnel would be the same, so I expect you'll agree that the cart will behave the same in the wind-tunnel as it would on the road in the wind.
No. The belts used in real-wind windtunnels are not roads.

Stage 2: Relocate wind-tunnel
I don't see that it matters how high or how low the wind tunnel is, or in which directon it is facing, as long as it remains level. In this case, I'd like put the wind-tunnel about 10 or 15 feet in the air, by strapping it to the top of a semi-trailer truck, with the end that holds the fan that blows the air directly above the driver's cabin
It's your money, Brian-M.
That may well be true, but no matter what, the belt in that tunnel is not a road. That is 100% of any difference you are likely to suggest.

The cart should perform exactly the same if the wind-tunnel is strapped to the top of a stationary truck.
Yes.

Stage 3: Drive the truck around
We drive the truck while running the cart in the wind tunnel. The truck has got really good suspension, so there's no vibration. It's on a perfectly level and straight highway with a computer-controlled cruise-control keeping the truck at a constant, unchanging velocity (ie. no acceleration or decelleration.)
Country music on the radio.

The cart should perform exactly the same while the truck is moving as when it's stationary, as long as there is no acceleration from the truck while the cart is being tested.
Yes, of course. This is a fruitless line of inquiry.

Stage 4: Syncronise velocities

If the air in the wind tunnel is blowing at 10mph. Just for fun, let's drive the truck at 10mph too. As the velocity of the truck isn't affecting the experiment, this shouldn't make any difference either.
Guaranteed outcome.

Stage 5: Open the wind-tunnel

Wait a sec... there's no wind today. So, if the truck is moving forward at 10mph and the fan in the truck is pushing the air backward at 10mph, then the air in the wind-tunnel is moving at the same speed as the air outside!

You have a real fan blowing real wind over the cart? Yes, the outside is irrelevant unless that 'leaks' into your enclosed environment. OK, now there is no wind outside.

So let's get rid of that fan, and open up the front and back of the wind-tunnel to the outside air.
....towards the inevitable conclusion.

As far as the cart is concerned, nothing has changed from stage 4. The truck is moving at the same speed as it was before, and the air is still blowing through the wind-tunnel at 10mph.
Yes. The relative velocities are the same as (4) but little else. The means by which the wind is generated and delivered to the cart are quite different.
Also, the belt is not a road !

Stage 6: Comparison

The cart is now on a moving surface in still air, just like the treadmill.
The situation it is now in is identical to having it on the treadmill.
The cart on the treadmill should perform the same as the cart in the open-ended wind-tunnel, which in turn performed the same as as the cart in the close-ended wind tunnel, which in turn performed the same as the cart on the ground in a "real" wind.

There is no difference.
No.
The assumption that a belt is a road, is entirely false. It can never be a road under any circumstances. For all the vehicles that you have ever seen on a belt, the behavior is not like that of a vehicle on the road.
Why? Nature does not allow motion on the spot.

Stage 7: Humber replies

This is the point where you, Humber, tell me at exactly which stage you think I went wrong, and give me a clear, detailed explaination as to why.

I have been trying to tell you, Brain-M, that the initial error does not lay in the treadmill, though that is riddled with them. It is a conceptual error.

Grab a chair. My initial remark is "How can you possibly believe that a belt under a wheel implies motion?"

Take the BMW/F1 case. Divide the belt into three, so that there is a wide bit under the floor pan, with two strips driving the wheels. Start only the middle bit so that it goes backwards as usual.

What does the middle bit do? It is a pattern generator. The surface is embossed to match that of the real road's surface. Moving that pattern, makes the boundary layer. You can liken it to an old weaving loom. The punched cards are the pattern, and the cloth the product. Same thing.

So you see, that this is not related to motion of the wheels or vehicle.
It is information about the road's surface, transferred to the local air, but it is not the road itself. Do you think information can make a car move?

If you remove the car it may well be much the same. Just a belt annoying the local air.

You could also remove the belt motion. Replace the wide belt with a panel, containing a matrix of nozzles. Attach that array to a source of air and a controlling computer. Take an FI car, and drive it around a full lap of a real circuit, while recording the road's surface. Process that recording so that the controlling computer drives those nozzles in the appropriate manner. The boundary layer will be generated in real-time for the entire track, and not just at the repetition rate of the belt. Moving now?

The wheels are the same. Turn them to mimic their behavior at that speed, but there is no causation to actual motion.
The reason that the belt drives the wheels and makes the boundary layer is that is a simple and effective solution to both those problems. Engineers are like that, but they tend not to accept travel at F1 speeds while standing around drinking coffee while they watch the car.

All other belts are similar. They mimic something else. A dyno mimics the expected load encountered at velocity, but not velocity itself. That is impossible. Models are not real in that sense.
One error is to take equivalency, and use it backwards. The real car has X joules at velocity V, so the belt (or nearest handy object) must "have" that KE. Cause generally precedes effect.
All the other stuff is around this fundamental error.
 
No. The belts used in real-wind windtunnels are not roads.
...

Yes. The relative velocities are the same as (4) but little else. The means by which the wind is generated and delivered to the cart are quite different.
Also, the belt is not a road !
...
For all the vehicles that you have ever seen on a belt, the behavior is not like that of a vehicle on the road.
Why? Nature does not allow motion on the spot.
...
Grab a chair. My initial remark is "How can you possibly believe that a belt under a wheel implies motion?"
...
So you see, that this is not related to motion of the wheels or vehicle.
It is information about the road's surface, transferred to the local air, but it is not the road itself. Do you think information can make a car move?
...
You could also remove the belt motion. Replace the wide belt with a panel, containing a matrix of nozzles. Attach that array to a source of air and a controlling computer. Take an FI car, and drive it around a full lap of a real circuit, while recording the road's surface. Process that recording so that the controlling computer drives those nozzles in the appropriate manner. The boundary layer will be generated in real-time for the entire track, and not just at the repetition rate of the belt. Moving now?
...
One error is to take equivalency, and use it backwards. The real car has X joules at velocity V, so the belt (or nearest handy object) must "have" that KE.
...
All the other stuff is around this fundamental error.
Oh, sweet Jesus sleepwalking christ!

I think I need to go walk into a wall or pound some screws into my face perhaps. I give up.
 
Good, you agree the real wind is correct.
Actually, all that I said was that your "real world" diagram was correct. What would it mean for the "real wind" to be incorrect?

I think see what you are doing here, Clive. You are assuming that the treadmill is already like the real thing and adapting the treadmill to that, in order to make the 3m/s vector in the way just did above.
No humber - you are twisting things around again. All I am doing is pointing out that your diagram is wrong if the boundary layer vector in both "real world" and "treadmill" is supposed to be representing the same thing (and the profile of the boundary layer is essentially the same for both cases).

One way that might make things clearer would be to explicitly state the profile of the boundary layer for our given wind speed (and assumed identical surface characteristics). For example, a very crude approach would be to simply say the boundary layer is 10 mm deep, and the speed of the air within the boundary layer (relative to the surface) varies linearly from 0 m/s at surface itself up to full wind speed at 10 mm above. Now choose some height above the surface for your boundary layer velocity vector in the diagram, perhaps 7mm. Therefore the speed at that height is 7 m/s relative to the surface. In the treadmill diagram that is 3 m/s to the left relative to the your chosen reference (effectively the ground the treadmill is resting on yet again) because in that case the belt is moving left at 10 m/s.

By the way, did you see my earlier post about the ocean liners? I also never heard a peep from you in response to #516 on this thread.
 
Oh, sweet Jesus sleepwalking christ!

I think I need to go walk into a wall or pound some screws into my face perhaps. I give up.

H'ethetheth,

now imagine humber, GMB and Dutch locked in one room. humber will go on and explain stuff by freezing time, to which GMB will object that time doesn't exist while Dutch dwelves into his hyperdimension to figure out what will happen next :D

I tell you, that would make for the best science-fiction comedy ever.

Greetings,

Chris
 
Whaaat!.
<SNIP>
Much ado about belts humber, but brace yourself, because I have to tell you that I don't think there was any belt mentioned in any of Brian-M's first six stages. There doesn't seem to be any need to introduce one in stage 7 either! So, time to try again perhaps, with just an ordinary wind tunnel, and the cart rolling (towards the tail of the truck) directly along some suitable surface in it. Or does there have to be a "grounding strip" from the tunnel to Mother Earth before it'll work?
 
I was thinking of the Castle Anthrax from the same film. You know the one, where all the girls want a spanking?
Naughty humber! Naked Greek boys and now the girls at Castle Anthrax; at least we know where all the blood is draining to.

ETA:
"can analyze the complex"
You don't think my description of the cart's operation is not remarkably similar to that of the Russian puzzle? How did I work that out, John?
Your description of the cart's operation? Let me see. I have a general picture of that, but I'm going to have to paraphrase. You don't seem to be convinced by Goodman's cart, and I think you probably said it didn't do what was claimed, and I think if we looked you would have raised several objections that you haven't retracted.

You boasted that you could build a DDWFTTW cart in a flash, and would 'very soon' post something you called your 'generic windcart', which I haven't seen, because you never posted it.

At the same time (before Christmas) you promised also an 'unambiguously clear' proof that the treadmill scenario was not a valid demonstration, or words to that effect.

You cannot possibly have described the cart's operation correctly - EVER - or by some black magic it has got lost amongst the acres of codswallop about it (on the treadmill) balancing, working without the need for a prop, floating on a cushion of air, working only because its wheels slip/skip/jump, using stored KE in the prop, etc., etc.

Fundamentally, you have never understood or admitted that the treadmill demonstration is an equivalent situation, apparently because you refuse to admit, or genuinely cannot manage to understand relative motion.

In the background to all this, as everyone else tries to educate you about how it works, you refuse also to understand fluid flow generally, and seem even to struggle with the concept of the wheel.

I have glanced at the posts since this one, and you are still demanding that relative motion be denied - in one case I saw, you added "Heresy!" when someone tried for what must be the hundredth time, to help you to see things from that perspective. This is another attribute that makes you very unpopular: you just wriggle out of everything; you do not discuss anything with (pardon me sounding like I'm from the 18th Century) honour. You insult people - not often directly - but with passive aggression, including this attitude that you cannot be wrong and will never submit to anyone else's better judgement, no matter how much evidence they have in their favour, and no matter how clearly the flaws in your version of things are demonstrated. In the final analysis, there is just humberverse for you, and anything that breaks your laws of humbernature is heresy.

Your use of language suggests strongly to me that you do not have a very clear mind at all, on anything, constantly mixing up subjects and situations. I do not know why, and it's not really my business. Several theories have been posted. You have said that you suffer from alexia, which wiktionary defines as "the inability due to a cerebral disorder to comprehend or understand writing". Perhaps all of our arguments are due to your inability to understand what is being written and what you are writing. If that is the case, then you should not be trying to argue about physics or anything else in written form, if you understood that sentence.

I am tempted to say that your repeated, demonstrable untruths and general arrogance about physics suggests that this may be just a lie, however, and the problem may be of another kind, but what is quite clear to everyone is that you have not described the cart accurately, and your description of every mechanical issue we have touched on is similarly confused and wrong.

There are often signs, as far as I can make out, that at least some of your confusion is false, and I would not be at all surprised if the whole thing was just a practical joke to see how long you can maintain this slow-motion train crash of a thread, reeling us all in with the morbid fascination and sick comedy of it. All the evidence points not to a reading disorder, but a personality disorder.

Maybe that's why you're thinking of girls wanting to be spanked: maybe that's what you think of everyone else on this thread, that we come here to get verbally spanked by you over and over again. You may note that I wasn't thinking of spanking. I was thinking what a silly place humberverse was, and that we really shouldn't bother going there at all. I also sent you a video of a brainiac getting slo-mo bitchslapped. If that doesn't tell you what's on my mind, nothing will.

I don't know what 'the Russian puzzle' is, so I don't know how your description of it compares to that of the cart. Please don't tell me about it.
 
Much ado about belts humber, but brace yourself, because I have to tell you that I don't think there was any belt mentioned in any of Brian-M's first six stages. There doesn't seem to be any need to introduce one in stage 7 either! So, time to try again perhaps, with just an ordinary wind tunnel, and the cart rolling (towards the tail of the truck) directly along some suitable surface in it. Or does there have to be a "grounding strip" from the tunnel to Mother Earth before it'll work?

Nope. A belt is not road. Take that from the treadmill, and where's your wind tunnel, Clive? So, it is relevant after all.
 
Oh, sweet Jesus sleepwalking christ!

I think I need to go walk into a wall or pound some screws into my face perhaps. I give up.

I bet you don't tell your qualified aeronautical colleagues that you believe the treadmill is a wind tunnel. I am sure of that.

Subduction Zone's brother will tell him of all the technical errors that I have told you, but not the why.
 
I don't see a diagram.
Nor did you see a question, which you had asked for specifically, with a subject and a question mark, after being accused of not answering them.

Let's just pretend you really meant "newton-meter" the whole time. :)
See this is why I prefer to stick to the original french version of 'metre' and 'litre': what you have described is a device for measuring newtons (like a milometer measures miles).;)

Or does it detect Newtons? And if it's the late Sir Issac, could we have his input, do you think? (...although it won't do any good, he's a humberverse heretic)
 
Actually, all that I said was that your "real world" diagram was correct. What would it mean for the "real wind" to be incorrect?


No humber - you are twisting things around again. All I am doing is pointing out that your diagram is wrong if the boundary layer vector in both "real world" and "treadmill" is supposed to be representing the same thing (and the profile of the boundary layer is essentially the same for both cases).

One way that might make things clearer would be to explicitly state the profile of the boundary layer for our given wind speed (and assumed identical surface characteristics). For example, a very crude approach would be to simply say the boundary layer is 10 mm deep, and the speed of the air within the boundary layer (relative to the surface) varies linearly from 0 m/s at surface itself up to full wind speed at 10 mm above. Now choose some height above the surface for your boundary layer velocity vector in the diagram, perhaps 7mm. Therefore the speed at that height is 7 m/s relative to the surface. In the treadmill diagram that is 3 m/s to the left relative to the your chosen reference (effectively the ground the treadmill is resting on yet again) because in that case the belt is moving left at 10 m/s.

By the way, did you see my earlier post about the ocean liners? I also never heard a peep from you in response to #516 on this thread.

The real wind diagram contains the same level of approximation that is used in the treadmill diagram. That is enough.
Do it for 1 or 10mm. Same result. Plot values in between. Same result.
ETA:
The liner example is a another reiteration of the hobo in a car. Already covered by other posts.
 
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humber the one thing that would make come around would be to read some of your posts. He would look at your twisted view of physics scream yikes and be ready to attest in court that yes the cart does go faster than the wind.

I know that you will not get this right but I will try one more time. No one is saying that the treadmill is the road. What they are saying that it is indistinguishable from going down a road with a tailwind at the speed of the treadmill. That is why it was used.
 
Nor did you see a question, which you had asked for specifically, with a subject and a question mark, after being accused of not answering them.

The general case. Ice carts excluded of course.

See this is why I prefer to stick to the original french version of 'metre' and 'litre': what you have described is a device for measuring newtons (like a milometer measures miles).;)

Use only the original.

Or does it detect Newtons? And if it's the late Sir Issac, could we have his input, do you think? (...although it won't do any good, he's a humberverse heretic)

He wouldn't be calling upon you to be his spokesman. Nice of you speak for him in his absence, though.
 
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The general case. Ice carts excluded of course.
Those aren't questions either, nor even sentences. I might as usefully declare "Vegetables. Green or yellow makes no odds." and require you to answer the question.

He wouldn't be calling upon you to be his spokesman. Nice of you speak for him in his absence, though.
I was hoping he might get through to you himself if he were here, but in a way he is: his views are well known. You refuse to accept them, or you don't understand them, and you make so much sense that no-one here can even work out which of those it is! This thread, entitled 'the validity of classical physics', was created because most of what you appear to think about the world contradicts classical physics. You don't even know how fast a hot-air balloon goes relative to the wind it's floating in! You think it doesn't reach windspeed. Then you say that it translates some of its heat-engine-provided potential energy into forward motion somehow (contrary to everyone including Newton) and manages to beat the wind its in, then that it moves at the mean windspeed, but that that still isn't windspeed. You don't understand, or pretend not to understand, the first goddam thing about the physical world, and have the audacity to ask "Don't you think my description of the cart was splendid though?". I don't expect you could describe how to get out of bed without making it impossible.
 
I bet you don't tell your qualified aeronautical colleagues that you believe the treadmill is a wind tunnel. I am sure of that.
Okay, that's can be arranged, hang on...


Jan-Wouter, Graduate student in Aerospace engineering, (working on a wind tunnel of sorts for testing the aerodynamics of hummingbird wings) tells me it is. He would also like to tell the people on the internet that they want to know the darndest things.

I guess I won your bet. Got screws?
 
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humber the one thing that would make come around would be to read some of your posts. He would look at your twisted view of physics scream yikes and be ready to attest in court that yes the cart does go faster than the wind.

So you say, SZ, but you had to ask him. I am not so sure that you can now second-guess his opinions.
No, he would not say what you suggest. For one thing, the treadmill has nothing to do with travel. It has no connection at all, so he will not say that.

He will certainly tell you that the treadmill is wrong. He will look at it from a technical point like I did, (e.g. conservation of energy) because he simply won't at first, appreciate the underlying cause. He says it's a "hoax", because it's too absurd to consider otherwise, but it's not a hoax of that sort. Spork's replies to you so far are not very convincing, are they?

He's now waiting for all the others to dismiss what I say. That is his M.O. He will use it on you, should you try to pass on what you learn, ZD.

I know that you will not get this right but I will try one more time. No one is saying that the treadmill is the road. What they are saying that it is indistinguishable from going down a road with a tailwind at the speed of the treadmill. That is why it was used.

Then what is it? It powers the wind through the cart's wheels?
Not like the wind, then.
So where is the aerodynamic simulation?
None, so it's not that, because it is said to be in the "still" air of "windspeed".
Actual travel? No
Power measurement? No

You have argued that the KE is relative. To what?
If you want to convince me SZ, show me how that is possible without simply declaring it to be so. The real mechanism that generates that KE, and transfers it to the frame from which it is relative.
Not an arithmetically banal solution, or another inappropriate quote from a text book. But the how.
I say it has no KE from any frame, because has no motion.

Put the treadmill in a large open space, but strip it down to the minimum so there is a cart spinning away on a belt. It looks like it is not moving w.r.t the ground. Get on the belt. Look, it's moving away from me! No, it is not. You are moving away from it.
A second person at the treadmill side, would see you move to the left, step off, walk back to the cart, then on the belt again, in a loop. You are the one that is moving, because you are the object that is accelerated by the belt; not the cart. Long belts make no difference, it is still you that has been accelerated, not the cart.
Remove that cart from the belt and repeat. Largely the same. No "winds" involved. It would be true for any object that can remain in one place on the belt.
 
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