Quote:
Originally Posted by El Dusty
Torque is not force. Torque is a Moment (Force * Distance) i.e. ft*lbs. or N*m. Otherwise completely agree with your statement.
For force or torque to exist there must be an opposing force. For wheels in the air, there is no opposing force. For wheels with "no traction" vs "with traction" you are looking at different frictional forces, static friction vs kinetic friction, respectively. There is still some torque applied to a spinning wheel.
Under normal driving conditions or when the vehicle is stopped tires are in static friction with the ground. The scenario where a wheel spins (or skids) happens when the force applied to the tire overcomes the static friction force available between the tire and ground surface (traction). Loss of traction means the tire and ground are in kinetic friction (spin or skid).
Under the identical conditions static friction always exceeds kinetic friction. Ie you may feel safe driving on wet or icy road but when you experience traction loss you will have considerably less traction sliding than when driving normally. I don't have data to back this up but I would estimate you can lose up to 75% or more of friction in certain conditions when sliding takes place. This is why when traction is lost you take you foot off the brakes or gas and try to regain traction so that at a minimum you can steer and ideally you can brake or accelerate. The exception here being when you drifting or are spinning muddys.
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Finally! everyone is starting to understand that torque can't go somewhere when there is no resistance or opposing force.
In my explanations, I chose to ignore friction, gear losses, etc. for clarity (why muddy the water. )
It may be a semantics issue, but I would disagree with your first statement. Torque is a rotational force. We just happen to use linear terms (lb-ft etc) to measure it or specify it.
