Era Di Cate
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Been a busy kitty these days :3
I guess, this that, unreleting family drama, school-related crap, playing Dishonored 2, blabla, here is a question or challenge to all natural philosophers on Doomworld:
Is there ANY possible way for a human being to balance upon a trolley in such a way that the trolley could move forward on its own (without the human falling off it so to speak)? Here is a sketch for you to get a basic idea about it:
(winged hussar for attention)
If not, what about going downhill? What about going downhill at first and going flat? What about going downhill then uphill?
I know that weight distribution is often a issue, and this and that, so you can make up your own variables, it is not like I am going to do this (any soon), but this had been haunting me for a while, so thanks for understanding.
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SO IT IS POSSIBLE UAHAHAHAHAHA THE WORLD SHALL FEAR ME AND MY TROLLEY CARTThanks for clearing it up for me, you who is just another natural philosopher fightning against unjust you :P
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There is no way you can move into any direction consistently by way of just being in perfect balance on a surface that has an angle of 90° relative to the centre of gravity, even if you have wheels below you. Your centre of mass, along with the centre of the trolley's mass, is always directly above the trolley's wheels in a scenario of perfect balance, meaning there is no force or energy present that could be translated into velocity. Leaning forward or backward would simply change the position of the centre of mass relative to the trolley's wheels, but that doesn't "create" anything that wasn't there before, because the moment you go out of perfect balance you're simply inviting gravitiy to have its ways. The loss of balance simply makes you fall until you hit the ground.
The only way you can move forward by balancing on a trolley, or any other object that has wheels on it, is by abusing the very things 42% deemed to be a problem. Friction is not only the one thing that makes movement energy consuming, it's the only thing that allows us to move anywhere to begin with. However, you will need a force of some sort to start moving at all (A kinetic impulse strong enough to overcome the resistance that is friction), and eventually the friction would make you stop on your way yet again, at which point any further movement requires additional energy.
It really doesn't matter what kind of ideas you come up with to make yourself and the trolley move into any direction, all require a force that starts the movement in and of itself by translating it into speed, which makes friction a necessity, thus the idea of travelling without any energy loss, simply by way of shifting balance falls apart entirely.