I'm going to do a plane pull for the Special Olympics in Cleveland in a couple of weeks...it's a blast. They fuel up a 737, tie a rope to it and then get groups to sponsor coed and men's teams of 20 to pull the damn thing 12 feet.

Last year, the team I'm on almost medalled on the men's side. I was the "anchor"...the biggest guy...so they put me on the end for the coed and men's teams. I'm thinking that because the force I apply from the absolute end of the rope has to travel really far to get to the weight...I should be close to the plane so we can move it quicker. Is that right?

The weight won't move until the rope is pulled tight. You pull the rope, your teammates pull the weight.

I think it takes the same number of Joules to move the plane regardless of where you are standing along the rope. What's more important is that all the vectors of the people pulling the rope are aligned along the path you want the plane to move. That is, if some people are pulling down on the rope and others are pulling forward, the people pulling down aren't helping as much.

I'll get a room at Holiday Inn Express tonight to see if I can be of more assistance tomorrow.

So I should just pull really fu**ing hard then, eh?

And in the same direction at the same time? Like rowing?

And why do they hae to fuel it up?

Raj? Leonard? Any thoughts? I won't ask you, Howard since you just have a Masters. Might I suggest we put Penny at the end of the runway and see if Mr. Flipper doesn't work harder in what will ultimately prove to be a futile attempt to impress her?

BAZINGA!!!

Well, in my line of work, when we pull on something and it doesn't move fast enough we get a bigger machine.

That's the weirdest thing about pulling a plane...even with 20 guys...you give the rope a good pull and the object doesn't move immediately. Normally, when lifting or pulling weights, you aply force and the object moves. Tha second or so of lag felt weird.

Our coed team was too coed...you were supposed to have a minimum of 4 women with 16 guys, we had 4 guys with 16 women, half of whom weighed like a buck ten. I was back there pulling and pulling...it took us at least five seconds to overcome the inertia.

Thanks for the useful advice...it came in handy...

Again...this year our coed team was too coed so we finished 14th out 18 teams. The men's team...OTOH...kicked ass!!! We won the men's divison and would have placed second in the public safety divison. We beat the fricking fire department. We beat a Cleveland PD team that featured a ringer in former OSU OL Alex Boone. We beat a team that had Don Pope....he's finished as high as #3 in the World's Strongest Man....I still don't know how we did that....

Steroids?

I dunno...I never did know crap about physics. Only class I ever failed.