A Motorless Underground Railway
If you have read the free travel, you will find this more intriguing. A booklet with the odd title A Motor less Underground, Leningrad-Moscow Railway was once put out. Its author A.A. Rodnykh, suggested a very interesting project .
His idea was to "dig a 600-km-long tunnel, linking up two cities Leningrad and Moscow by an absolutely straight underground line. this could give us for the first time the opportunity to travel along the straight instead of following a curved path as now." He wishes to say that all our roads describes arcs, as they follow the curve of the earth surface, while the suggested tunnel will follow a straight line along a chord (assume earth as a circle).
This project - if ever realized - would possess a unique characteristic. In this tunnel a train move by itself. At each point, since the train is going in the downward direction due to gravity, it will not require a motor. The big tunnel will actually be inclined to some angle with the horizontal ground at both the points.
In such a slanting tunnel every object should swing, due to gravity, to and fro like a pendulum, hugging to the bottom. Inside it a train would move by itself along the rails, its weight doing the work of locomotive. At first the train will move very slowly but with every new second its speed would increase, to reach soon a figure so incredible,that the air in the tunnel would offer a noticeable resistance.
Do you see any flaw in this design, A motorless vehicle can help realize the dream of free travel. Why this is not done yet?
His idea was to "dig a 600-km-long tunnel, linking up two cities Leningrad and Moscow by an absolutely straight underground line. this could give us for the first time the opportunity to travel along the straight instead of following a curved path as now." He wishes to say that all our roads describes arcs, as they follow the curve of the earth surface, while the suggested tunnel will follow a straight line along a chord (assume earth as a circle).
This project - if ever realized - would possess a unique characteristic. In this tunnel a train move by itself. At each point, since the train is going in the downward direction due to gravity, it will not require a motor. The big tunnel will actually be inclined to some angle with the horizontal ground at both the points.
In such a slanting tunnel every object should swing, due to gravity, to and fro like a pendulum, hugging to the bottom. Inside it a train would move by itself along the rails, its weight doing the work of locomotive. At first the train will move very slowly but with every new second its speed would increase, to reach soon a figure so incredible,that the air in the tunnel would offer a noticeable resistance.
Do you see any flaw in this design, A motorless vehicle can help realize the dream of free travel. Why this is not done yet?
Labels: friday special, funphysics
posted by Rajesh Lal at
8:32 PM
17 Comments:
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
several problems.
1)friction
2)gravity
3)angle
Alright, let’s start with friction. In this system, the friction would make this transport system very unlikely. The large amount of friction would be due to the mass of the train. Also, if the train did stop, it would be stuck in the middle of the arch, all the way in the ground, which is bad.
secondly, it is assumed that gravity is constant (about 10m/s^2), however, as we go into the earth, the acceleration is constantly changing and possibably in different directions (not just straight down.)
Third, as the angle between the length of the pendulum and the midpoint of the track increases, the less it will follow the ideal pendulum equation (I can’t remember at the moment). The conservation of energy between kinetics and potential is most ideal when angles are less then 5 degrees.
~Cybersurf~
At 300 miles the tunnel is at it deepest point. Therefore from 0 to 300 miles the train will be traveling down, but for the remaining 300 miles the train is rising, so will not reach its destination without the help of additional power.
1) 600km is 379 mi (600 x 1000 x 3.3 /5280 = 379). The chord won't be appreciably closer to center of earth. Even mid-pt of chord is only a few mi down from surface. Not enuff acceleration.
Circumference (full circle around earth) is 24,900 mi. 379mi is 1.5%. (Lenin => Moscow is only 360 degree x 1.5% = 5.5deg.)
2) Even if gravity works, say, tunnel were to be 3,000 mi, it only works in the 1st half of trip. Train will be slowed down by gravity, and stopped in nowhere.
3) However, for a 3000mi tunnel, all passengers have to strip to naked, if not melted.
4) Forget about gravity pull, train has to be pulled with electricity. How to get the power? Voltage drop will stop train.
5) Ventilation problem. B4 train arrives, all passengers have suffocated to death.
6) For 380 mi, bathrooms will be crowded.
7) Construction cost tremendous.
8) Operatiion: how to pull train out, for repair?
9) Maintenance: the poor guy has to walk 190 mi, carrying nuts and bolts, plus picnic items.
10) Seats maybe flooded due to Underground water (wear Scuba suits pls).
11) No Lighting. Can't see your nose. A lady might sit on your laps. (Is this advantage or disadvantage...?)
12) There are advantages: No obstructing traffic. No waiting for red lites. No scenery (all have to snooze). No children playing on tracks (could be too many moles). No cost for purchasing land (not a concern in communist country).
Should we call it "Russian Train", like "Polish Light Bulb"...? Shark
If there was absolutely NO friction, it might actually work, you just might have to pull it the last mile, maybe.
But that's improbable. The friction would stop it much before it even reached 3/4 of the way.
"If there was absolutely NO friction, it might actually work, you just might have to pull it the last mile, maybe. "
actually it would work with no friction because of newtons laws of motion
but the problem in this situation is overcoming the static friction (the strongest of all frictions)
the weight of the train with the acceleration of gravity would be way to much for such a heavy train to overcome static friction without an engine. Other factors do come in to play but i figure it all comes down to friction
Ahhh...stop writing such long tricks!
Even with no friction you WOULD have to use some energy to at the very end of the trip, because of the LOSS OF ENERGY. Plus youd need energy for inside the train, structures inside the tunnel, etc. But such a system could save energy, in theory.
They are actually talking about really constructing an underwater vacuum tunnel tethered to the ocean floor for a frictionless mag-lev train across the Atlantic that would allow travel from NYC to London in 1 hour. The train would go Mach speeds. AWESOME.
ZEROth Law of Thermodynamics!
"Even with no friction you WOULD have to use some energy to at the very end of the trip, because of the LOSS OF ENERGY"
Uh no? conservation of energy. Energy can not be destroyed. you hire some guy to push the train from the outside and if there is NO friction it will work. use batteries to power lights and that jazz. flaw in this plan is stopping
Besides the other items that are a 'NO' to the idea, i haven't heard the one yet which i see which would be the 'bends' like in scuba which would compress the people , pop their ears by the very speed which they would be traveling, and later if the ascent wasn't slow enough the oposite decompression would occur . Thats one miserable train ride.. and no view. And Here is Hell going by on your left.... watch for the little demons torturing people. ha
People,, MagLev -is- a motor in and of itself.
No motor i doubt it.
People,, MagLev -is- a motor in and of itself.
No motor i doubt it.
42 Min from start to finish.
The cost would be outrageous. But the technology is there to create a trainlike vehicle to travel the tunnel with very little friction.
We are not talking about a steam locamotive put in neutral people. Get your head out side the box and think.
Well...
At that depth isn't the railway going to be in the mantle layer of the earth? The tunnel would collapse as it was being dug. Also Molten rock is very hot(!).
Yanon Mous
Energy can be destroyed. Ever heard of matter-antimatter annihilation?
The only fundamental problem is energy loss by friction and drag, and that is just as bad as for surface travel. The kinetic energy isn't destroyed, it's converted to heat and sound, it is only dissipated - effectively lost.
The tunnel would have cost a fortune to make and maintain. Rodnyk obviously had no clue about physics.
Energy cannot be destroyed. The energy of a stationary mass m is mc^2 (remember Einstein).
When two particles anti-particles annihilate they produce a pair of photons (gamma rays). The photons have the same energy and mass as the original masses. The photons don't have a rest mass, that's not a problem as they always travel at the speed of light.
Conservation of energy and conservation of mass are combined. Energy and mass can be considered to be the same thing, just different forms.
For this reason high energy physicists talk about masses using units of electron volts/(speed of light squared). E.g the mass of an electron is approx 0.51 MeV/c^2.
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