[EricH]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Yes, I understand that more = more, that's not what I was asking at all.

My point was that accepting a statement as truth without understanding the magnitude of the effect, or knowing how much the effect applies, is not a good idea. Especially when "conventional wisdom" has all of those things.

It seems like a lot of people are parroting back stuff they heard from some guy instead of relying on observations and data. How is that good engineering?

Maybe, when first-hand observations are scarce, you have to go by hearsay or not go at all. Have you ever actually observed that F=m*a? Have you ever measured the coefficient of friction without using F=u*N? How do you know, then, that what you've heard is correct? Maybe F=m*a^0.9999999999999993, or F=u^0.999999995*N measured experimentally. Every time that we as engineers use an equation we've learned, we're parroting back stuff we heard from some guy.

The only difference is that for these established equations, "some guy" is whoever wrote the textbook and whoever taught the classes. Sure, they've been backed up by decades or centuries of testing. But only a few tests have actually been run on wheel width vs. traction at the FRC level. I can only think of 2, and only 1 has actually been finished and put out there so far.