4 ms·
The material will break eventually. Other gears provide some structural support against expansion, but that is not what is going to break a gear. IMO the thing
by zaarn 6y ago
The material will break eventually. Other gears provide some structural support against expansion, but that is not what is going to break a gear. IMO the thing that would break it would simply be the mass of the gear; the fast acceleration would tear the gear out of it's axis or break it's teeth.
If it doesn't, at some point the material will give, likely away from the driving gear, and the entire thing will fling itself apart.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoOf course it would, which is why I talked about a hypothetical material. If it did not, though, what would relativity make it do?
- ses1984 6y agoI'm not a physicist but it's hard to have a thought experiment where you introduce ideas like ignoring materials strength, because that could be a factor in what relativity would make it do. Anyway as you approach the speed of light the energy required to accelerate approaches infinity, so you would just not get it there because of the energy requirement. I think a simpler version of this experiment is a really long rigid rod. What happens if you pick one end of the rod to be the axis and then you try to rotate the rod about the axis? https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/455189/rotating-rod-in-special-relativity https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/455189/rotating-...