Goin' Nowhere

Is the torque 50^12? Does that mean in 50 billion years or so the gears are gonna break since the block won't turn? Which gear would break, the first or the last?

Yeah, I was thinking about that. I'm guessing that the stress is slowly winding up in the system. If there's no "weak link" then I'd say that the teeth on final gear would fail first because that's where the highest stress concentration is.

See I was thinking it would be the first gear. I assuming all of the gearboxes have some give, that is to say if the last one stops moving and stress starts to build, the next gearbox down will take on some of that stress, so on an so forth until it gets to the first gear, which doesn't have anything to pass the stress onto except the motor. So maybe the motor would break? I have no idea, but it's bothering me.

You're correct in the mechanism, but remember that as the stress begins to build up the line, the stress on the fixed end grows also, at a much higher rate. That's why I'm pretty sure that end will fail first.

I'll tell you what, let's agree to meet at the MIT museum half a billion years from now and take some measurements :-)

Sounds good. I'll get to work on my time machine, you figure out how to handle the Morloks.

I agree with you and I think the motor and first several gear sets will wear out long before anyone has to worry about stress cracks. I would like to see the motor on the other end. How much larger would the motor have to be to even turn the last gearset at 1 rpm, and if it is even possible, would the final shaft turn at a speed faster that the speed of light?