Last year Vaughan Pratt (of automata theory and Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm) asked on a hardcore theoretical physics group blog how does a light mill (device allegedly proving corpuscular nature of light, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_mill) really work. To my knowledge this question after 150 years still awaits consensus over a satisfactory anwser (while having far too plenty seemingly convincing ones).

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2008/07/light_mills.html

A toy simulation:

http://www.gregegan.net/SCIENCE/LightMill/LightMill.html

Here is a video of an airplane taking off on a treadmill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbRcg3ji_Pc

The crux of the issue is that no matter how fast the wheels spin in the opposite direction they exert almost no force on the airframe, thus failing to counteract the forward pull of the propeller.