I was watching videos of aircraft landings and noticed how disproportionately small the wheels were on just about every aircraft. Wouldn’t it be better to have larger tires (like in cars) to provide better traction for take off/landing?
In: Physics
The tires are exactly as big as they need to be to support the plane’s weight on the tarmac and runway. There’s no reason to make them bigger. In fact, making them bigger would detrimental because they plane would just have to carry around all that extra weight for no reason. Traction during takeoff and landing is simply not an issue that needs to addressed by changing the size of a plane’s wheels. Planes are designed to fly in the air, cars are designed to drive on the ground. The wheels serve completely different purposes so it makes no sense to compare them to each other.
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