Fuckin magnets
How do they work?
Tide comes in, tide comes out, You can’t explain that.
The dumber a civilization is, the more sense God makes.
Gyroscope effect. You ever do the experiment where you spin a bike tire really fast and then try to tilt it? Shit’s nuts.
That only causes part of the effect, most of it is the bike’s steering countering the momentum of your fall.
You wouldn’t be able to balance on a bike with just the wheel spinning, you’re too heavy. That is why bikes on those indoor rollers allow the bike to move left and right a bit.
So biking is just falling with style?
Just like orbiting something. Satellites are constantly just falling back to earth, but with enough grace to always miss earth. I bet satellites would be great cyclists!
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. … Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
Turning a motorcycle or bike is falling with purpose! The faster you are falling (leaning over more), the faster you turn!
Just wait till OP learns that you need to counter-steer bikes to balance
That’s always fun. Some people will swear it can’t possibly work like that, but they have plenty of experience riding bikes. You wouldn’t be able to turn properly at speed unless you’re counter-steering, so they clearly have done this. The idea seems to be so incredibly intuitive that people don’t even realize they’re doing it, which is very interesting.
Hmmm… Both things involve bicycles… Maybe they’re just magic?
My next DnD character will be a bicyclist
Mine will just be a bike
Town bike?
The gyroscopic effect of slowly spinning, light bicycle wheels is negligible compared to the weight of the bike and it’s rider. If it was what keeps you upright, riding a tiny scooter-thing with skateboard/inliner wheels would be impossible. I mean those without motor, pedals, where you push yourself forward with one foot on the ground), often for kids.
What actually keeps you upright isn’t a physical effect, but just training your brain to instinctually keep you upright. While you’re moving, turning the handlebar effectively moves the bike below you left and right. So if you start tilting to the right, you turn right (slightly) so the bike/scooter is moving below you to compensate. That’s why learning to ride anything that is balancing on 2 wheels takes a relatively long time, but only once. Then your brain knows what to do, and it just works without thinking about it.
The design of the front forks also assists with stability - having some rake and trail means the front wheel has a tendency to self centre (particularly at speed).
first, and less importantly, your wheels are gyroscopes
second, and much more importantly, at speed you use your steering to compensate for imbalance. You lean a little right? slight steering to the right compensates. When standing still, steering is no longer an option (duh)
It’s the central pedal force
my bike doesn’t have a central pedal. how does it stay up right?
Aliens.
Same principle as a gyroscope: a turning wheel will tend to stay perpendicular or parallel to the direction of the gravity vector because if it starts tilting away from such orientation there’s a force that pushes it back.
Also works better with bigger wheels (if I remember it correctly the effect is related to spinning momentum).
I was pretty surprised when learning Physics and they show us how to derive the formula for that (which I totally forgot since that was over 3 decades ago).
Edit: Actually the gyroscopic effetc is just a part of it. See this article
Actually, it’s the bike’s geometry rather than a gyroscopic effect. Try rolling a bike backwards rather than forward - it’ll topple quickly
Yeah, you’re mostly right: Why bycicles stay upright.
There’s some gyroscopic effect, but per that article it’s not the main reason.
A Veritasium video about the topic, if someone is actually interested: https://youtu.be/9cNmUNHSBac
Wait til anon hears about launch loops or space elevators
How long does it take to go up the space elevator?
What floor are you getting off at?
Not getting off in an elevator, that would be gross.
B-16
Having the pivot point (steering) for the front wheel behind it’s axle helps
Yes there are demonstrations on YouTube of bikes just wanting to remain upright. You can role it down a hill and it will self correct. Something to do with physics but I forget the terms.
Dynamic stability
What’s really hard is getting a 5 year old to understand this before you run out of energy from trying to hold their seat and run at the same time.
That’s how I learned it. My dad got tired, let go and stopped.
I noticed it was suddenly much easier to pedal, so I turned around to see him standing 30ft behind me, then I crashed.
If you’ve forgotten high school physics (like me), this is a legitimately strange phenomenon.
Think of this as you inch forward until the green light with a motorcycle behind you. Just stop. Riding at 2 mph is misery.
Get a lighter bike, mate. Scooter goes brrrr! But also, yes. Please god, the misery of traffic jams must stop. Let me lane split!
Real talk, science doesn’t have the answer to this yet.
Everyone is wrong. It’s the encabulation effect.
Can confirm. Last week, I got home from a ride, stopped in front of the garage, couldn’t unclip, and promptly fell over. It turned out one of the bolts fell out from the cleat during the ride, so the cleat just rotated, instead of unclipping. D’oh. Fortunately, I mostly landed in grass, though I did scrape my ankle a bit.
