My kid has this toy car and it doesn’t take batteries, it just takes a small push and can go really far and take a lot of obstacles. Inside there are a bunch of gears that seem to propel the car, but in terms of conservation of momentum and energy, I don’t get how it can go so well. how this works? (I do have a 5 yo but she doesn’t care as much as I do about getting a correct answer.)
In: Engineering
It has a flywheel. When you turn the wheels it turns gears which turn the fly wheel. If you can see inside it’s a metal disc, and the toy car is probably a bit on the heavy side for its size. Once that flywheel is spun up it takes a while to slow down completely and since it’s heavy enough it has more than enough stored energy to overcome the weight of the car when placed down and send it forward. If the same disc was made of paper it would just stop the moment you put the car down.
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