Posts Tagged ‘bikesafe’

We still don’t really know how bicycles work

Saturday, January 21st, 2017

We still don’t really know how #bicycles work
http://www.NewStatesman.com/science/2013/08/we-still-don%E2%80%99t-really-know-how-bicycles-work Still rides upright with special wheels cancelling gyroscopic effect

QT:{{”
“The most definitive analysis came exactly a century later. It involved an experimental bicycle that had all its gyroscopic effects cancelled out by a system of counter-rotating wheels. The effort of building such a strange contraption was worth it: the resulting paper was published the prestigious journal Science.
The publication plunged bicycle dynamics back into chaos. It turns out that taking into account the angles of the headset and the forks, the distribution of weight and the handlebar turn, the gyroscopic effects are not enough to keep a bike upright after all. What does? We simply don’t know. Forget mysterious dark matter and the inexplicable accelerating expansion of the universe; the bicycle represents a far more embarrassing hole in the accomplishments of physics.”
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