Hello!!! This has always confused me since I was a kid.
How exactly do modern cars, or older steam locomotives, move when they have multiple tons of metal sitting on top of them? Like how does all of that mass sit on an axel and the axel is still able to rotate at high speeds? I’ve seen train axels/wheels in person and it’s basically a large metal rod with a wheel on each end. Does the force of the engine overcome the friction of all of that weight?
Thank you in advance!
For anyone else who is curious about this in the future, several of the comments below were super helpful. I was also able to find this video on YouTube as a visual demonstration based on the leads these guys provided!
https://youtu.be/lIEHscqWJAk
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Trains and cars both have enormous motors called Drives, that have to be powered by either combustion engines, what you see in cars, by basically controlled explosions of fuel, or with trains they simply need a lot of energy in the motors in order to make them spin. On top of that, trains’ weight actually helps them stick to the track by making it extremely hard to move the wheels unless everything on top of them is moving as well because of the incredible force pushing the contact point down into the track. Hope this was helpful. If you still have a question, please ask.
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