3 ms·
Even if the first gear's teeth were moving at supersonic speeds, there still would not be any perceptible motion of the last 90 gears or so. If the first gear'
by thedance 7y ago
Even if the first gear's teeth were moving at supersonic speeds, there still would not be any perceptible motion of the last 90 gears or so. If the first gear's teeth were moving at relativistic speeds, there would still be no apparent motion in about 80 of the gears. The speed of light is only about a million times higher than the speed of sound, and this contraption loses a factor of a million after six gears.
- perl4ever 7y agoI did not know this, but according to what I was just reading, pretty much any physical material must rupture when it spins close to the speed of sound in that material. If you imagine a relativistic spinning disk anyway, then it gets interesting because due to length contraction, the circumference changes relative to the diameter. I'm not up to the math, but it seems like it might change the effective gear ratio depending on your perspective and the closeness of the speed to C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrenfest_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrenfest_paradox