On 23 February 2014 11:26, SS <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Imagine a car with a "fuel scoop" continuously sucking up fuel as it > > drove. > > The area above is the diameter of the column of fuel it would have to > > suck > > up in order to be just enough to keep moving. > > "A column of fuel with some area" That is a 3D concept, not an area. I > suspect that this problem will need a face to face meeting and a paper > and pen. > > shiv >
Assume that this 'area' is the same as that of the cross-section of the fuel combustion chamber. Then if you add up the height of the columns of fuel that was combusted during the 100km journey, it would be exactly 100km if the car was an ideal machine[1] (and the chamber was empty at the beginning and end of the journey if you want to nitpick). I hope that helped or at the least didn't make it worse. Kiran [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_machine
