: a deceptive question that is intended to make one give an answer that is not correct or that causes difficulty
a question that makes you believe you should answer it in a particular way, when the real question is hidden or there is no right answer
If someone asks you a trick question, they ask you a question which is very difficult to answer, for example because there is a hidden difficulty or because the answer that seems obvious is not the correct one.
Imagine a plane standing on a giant conveyor belt runway, the conveyor is programmed to move backwards at exactly the same speed as the plane moves forward relative to the ground on the sides of the conveyor. Can the plane take off?
Just think of it as an engineering experiment, as the plane starts to move forward the conveyor moves backwards at the same rate of acceleration the plane would have were it on solid stationary ground.
Let me demonstrate by asking a series of different questions about the same scenario:
1) Do plane engines drive the wheels?
2) Can planes travel faster than their take-off speed?
3) Considering your answers to 1) and 2), if a plane is on a conveyor belt moving in the opposite direction, can it still reach take off speed?
I think everyone here can answer those questions, and the questions don’t push them towards visualising a static plane the way your / the ‘Mythbusters’ question does.
Normally a plane sits on a runway, spins up it's engine, moves forward, gets enough air over the wings and takes off. But in this case the plane is sitting not on a runway but a huge conveyor belt that is matching the plane's forward speed in reverse. And the grand question is, can the plane take off? The myth is, it can't..
DrewMerson wrote:Any question which leads people to misunderstand the real question being asked is a trick question, or just a badly worded one.
Yossarian wrote:I think it fits the definition of a trick question based on those definitions above. The trick for me, if we were to take the question as posed in the Mythbusters version is in the words “a huge conveyor belt that is matching the plane's forward speed in reverse” because the conveyor belt isn’t able to do that, the plane can always move faster. By implying that this is possible within the question, it sends you down the wrong path.
GurtTractor wrote:Matching speed is not an impossibility, you may be confusing this version with the one where the conveyor matches the rotation of the wheels, I think in that one you get a feedback loop to infinity when you factor in the thrust from the plane as the wheels will always move faster than the belt. However I think that even if you tried this as a real experiment the plane could probably still take off and the belt would obviously hit some limit.
acemuzzy wrote:Hold the fuck up - I thought the brakes were on?
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