A train is traveling at 50 miles and hour and someone flies a radio controlled plane into an open window. What happens to the plane after it enters the window of the train?
Not enough information.
If the plane is travelling parallel to the train, and in the same direction, it is effectively motionless with respect to the train, and will become non aerodynamic (fall) upon entering the air of the moving train. If it is moving at a ninety-degree angle to the train, it will keep moving along its present vector, and be tumbled by the motion of the air, and or objects on the train. If it is moving opposite the motion of the train, the effective doubling of speed of the oncoming wind of the still air in the train will probably flip it over.
However, it will definitely be hit by something very shortly after entering the window, in any case, and will crash. Torts will be created, causing lawyers to accrue, fees. Litigation will be generated in direct proportion to the dollar value of the damages done.
Tris
“Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.” ~ Erwin Schrodinger ~
Flying into the open window of a train would essentially be like hitting the mother of all wind shear. ‘Wind Shear’ happens when two masses of air with different directions of travel intersect. This typically happens around thunderstorms, and can cause an instant loss of airspeed of 20-50 mph or more.
I was envisioning the plane traveling at a 45 degree angle into the widow of the plane.
Well, the real world answer is not the same as the “plane entering a moving air mass, from a still air mass problem.”
There is a very large area of turbulence associated with the passage of a train. That alone is going to tumble your plane, and which way is pretty much a random thing. If it happens to enter a window, it will certainly no longer be flying in the aerodynamic sense of the word. It will now have a resultant velocity that is different with respect to the stuff on the train. How different doesn’t really matter much, it will hit something, and make a mess.
In a theoretical model, where a magically created stream of air is moving along at seventy miles an hour, without creating any turbulence, and a model plane enters the stream at an angle, moving at a speed which makes its foreword motion with respect to the moving air exactly zero, . . .
It will crash, and make a mess.
Hmmmmm. I guess the theoretical answer is the same.
Tris
“No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris … [because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping.” ~ Orville Wright ~