Junior Member
Registered: 12-26-08 | Once upon a time I was driving along a country road and I observed a semi-truck quite a ways ahead of me that had pulled off of the road. The truck driver was walking along the side of the truck, beating on the trailer with a shovel. He then got back in the truck and pulled out in front of me and raced off down the road. A mile or two later on down the road I came upon the same truck, which again was pulled off the road, and the driver was again beating on the side of the truck with a shovel. He then got back in the truck and pulled out in the front of me and raced off down the road. A mile or two later I came up on the truck and as the driver was just getting out of the truck I pulled in behind him and ran up to the driver just as he started to pound on the side of the truck with the shovel. I asked him, "What are you doing?" He said, "I have a truck with a 50000 Lbs gross weight load limit and I have 100000 Lbs of canneries in it, so I have to keep half of them flying all the time.
Will this work? |
Senior Member
Registered: 10-05-08 | Old Urban legend and funny story.
Nope. The cannaries weight the same whether they arre sitting or flying. When flying they are still suspended on a column of air that is on the bottom of the truck.
When an airplane flies, it's weight is still part of the gross weight of the earth. It is just on top of some air that is holding it up.
Same thing.
The only difference is that as the birds swoop up and down in the truck, the weight will vary. However it's average weight will always be the total weight of the truck plus birds. |
Senior Member
Registered: 08-09-05 | yeah that's where the urban legend falls down.
the birds can't stay in flight for the whole trip.
even if the truck was an "open air" design (which would probably be bad,
the birds have to land sometimes, and thus the overall average would be the same. |
Senior Member
Registered: 09-01-07 | Tested and busted. |
Junior Member
Registered: 01-01-09 | The question is not one of weight. Scales don't measure weight. They measure the sum of all forces pushing down on it. (That's why if you push down on a scale the reading increases even though the mass on it has not.) An imbalance of forces causes an acceleration (or you could say it the other way around, F = ma). Thus where the birds are is far less important than how they are accelerating. Is the birds were accelerating upwards the whole time the amount of downward force would be less, but if they stop accelerating the force would be the same in flight or on the ground. |
