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Re: wheels come off - speed doubles?



A conjecture:

Note the report says "the extra wheels came off". Suppose this means that
these wheels were not touching the ground while still attached to the
moving truck (used only for very heavy loads), but had both rotational and
linear momentum. Suppose their rotational speed were greater than that of
the contact wheels, which are rolling without slipping. Then when they
hit the ground this excess rotational energy would transform (via
friction) into increased translational energy ???

Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stefan Jeglinski" <jeglin@4PI.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 1:06 PM
Subject: wheels come off - speed doubles?


| An entertaining story, if nothing else:
|
| http://www.wral.com/news/1465614/detail.html
|
|
| I'm having a hard time figuring what physical mechanism might make
| the speed double. I want to say this is bogus, despite the highway
| patrol (see text and video) obviously taking it as fact... it if was
| true, there should be an obvious kinetic energy principle behind it,
| but I see none.
|
|
| Stefan Jeglinski
|


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