Physics!
So interesting, So intriguing. Always fascinating.
Ever so often though, someone devises a hypothetical situation and asks a question. As you try to solve these "paradoxes", you realize your understanding of the fundamentals aren't that great after all. Sometimes only a real experiment can quell the dichotomy that these questions bring about in the thinking public.
The great Feynman was susceptible too. In his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" he describes a debate he had with his contemporaries. A lawn sprinkler squirts out jets of water and the spout is designed such that the sprinkler also rotates due to the direction in which the water is squirted. Now the question was.. if the sprinkler was immersed in water and it sucked in water instead of squirting it, which direction would it rotate? Feynman went about devising an experiment, proved his friends wrong and got thrown out of the lab for mucking around near the cyclotron.
Often however it is not practical to devise such experiments, sometimes it is just plain impossible as is in the case of this curious situation I am about to describe:
"Imagine a plane is sitting on a massive conveyor belt, as wide and as long as a runway. The conveyer belt is designed to exactly match the speed of the wheels plane , moving in the opposite direction. Can the plane take off?"
I've first seen this on
boingboing. I'm not linking to the page yet, coz I don't want to give away the answer right away. What do you think?
I have about 3 or 4 other such intriguing questions, I will be posting them soon :)
