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Re:Making a Googol:1 Reduction with Lego Gears [video] by omginternets on Thursday July 16, 2020 @05:43AM (#23857319)
Ha! I wonder (having no mechanical engineering background) ... is it possible to to drive e.g. a tank up a hill using a lego motor with a large enough gear ratio?
Re:Making a Googol:1 Reduction with Lego Gears [video] by jonahrd on Thursday July 16, 2020 @07:53AM (#23858035)
This channel is a treasure trove for answer to similar questions:

[1] Can lego break a steel axle?

[2] How much load can the smallest lego gear handle?

[3] Testing lego gear and pulley systems

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRn5waE0qfk

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjhOGoZ-bNI

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWgTRHH656Y

Re:Making a Googol:1 Reduction with Lego Gears [video] by layoutIfNeeded on Thursday July 16, 2020 @05:49AM (#23857346)
No, because the plastic gears connected to the drive wheel would snap under the immense torque.
Re:Making a Googol:1 Reduction with Lego Gears [video] by omginternets on Thursday July 16, 2020 @06:08AM (#23857443)
Right, sure. In my mind, I was more interested in the relationship between gear-ratios, torque and the displacement of weight.

What if the motor gears were infinitely strong? That is: is the power output of a small electric motor theoretically sufficient to drive a tank up a hill with an arbitrarily large gear ratio?

Re:Making a Googol:1 Reduction with Lego Gears [video] by simias on Thursday July 16, 2020 @06:26AM (#23857535)
You can trade torque for speed basically. So yes. "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world". That being said it would be so slow that you'd probably break something before you've moved a millimeter.

The same Youtube channel demonstrates how to use gear reduction to increase torque and bend a steel bar with legos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRn5waE0qfk

Re:Making a Googol:1 Reduction with Lego Gears [video] by Someone on Thursday July 16, 2020 @06:56AM (#23857658)
Yes. it would be equivalent to Archimedes’ claim “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes#The_Lever)
Re:Making a Googol:1 Reduction with Lego Gears [video] by rland on Thursday July 16, 2020 @06:18AM (#23857487)
Certainly. It would just happen arbitrarily slowly. (And, at that scale, other factors would come into play; the soil would deform under the wheels of the tank before it moved any distance, probably)