My partner has been asking me how tires spin (specifically on cars) and I don’t know how to answer. How do they spin without coming loose? How do they understand the speed you want them to go?
Thanks in advance!!
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Basically due to friction and Newton’s Third Law (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). Your car’s engine is trying to push the car forwards, this causes the planet to push back against the car.
The planet can only do this where it is in contact with the car, which is the wheel. You can simulate this by holding something like a pen extremely loosely with the tips of your fingers of one hand and use the palm of the other to slide under the pen. See how it rolls in the opposite direction to how your hand is moving? That’s the same principle behind how the wheels roll forwards while the planet is pushing them backwards.
Your speed is affected by how hard the engine is working so how hard it tries to move forward, affecting how hard the Earth pushes back.
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