This video is interesting!
My old steel bike centres much better than my new aluminum frame/ carbon fork one. It's just point and forget, and it feels more secure and safer. In fact, I'm discovering that despite its extra weight, it's much more fun to ride, as it seems to have life and dynamics, a natural springiness, which helps to propel you along. It feels fast and just flies. You can feel this power within the frame, like it has momentum, and with the steel frame's natural springiness, it zooms you along with a bounce, which feels sturdy. It just terrific! It goes! Wow! There are many advocates who prefer steel bikes for this reason, and the modern ones are lighter. It looks like I've become a fan too.
I was trying to think what does it remind me of, and I got it, it's a spring diving board? Years ago in the UK we had real diving boards at the larger swimming pools. They were called spring diving board or springboards. As you run along the board you bounce due to its springiness. When you reach the end of the board the bounce becomes more pronounced, and on the final part of the jump the board imparts its energy into you. Its an amazing feeling as you zoom upwards before diving down. You are literally flying!
As you run along the board you are entirely in sync with the enormous power that is building up, and it feels very secure because you know exactly how to use it. You are at one with it.
So, the steel bike is absorbing energy and given it back at the right points. It feels terrific! You just fly along.
K, here is something even more shocking. Scientists don't know how a general anesthetic works.
ReplyDeleteHow about that.
DeleteDid you see the comment under the video?
Bicycle science is more complicated than rocket science.
I don't see the video on my browser. I should look into that :)
DeleteOn my phone I can't see the videos, but I can in my Windows PC and android tablet.
DeletePerhaps if they explained the stability of a unicycle, and a tricycle, scientists could come up with a unified theory.
ReplyDeleteOr may we need to hire some Arts Degree people to solve this mystery.
I've only ridden steel bikes. Now that I have to carry it up the stairs to the apartment, I'm beginning to notice the weight.
ReplyDeleteI've just come across this.
DeleteWhy It’s Impossible For Steel Frames To Be More Comfortable Than Aluminium
https://www.cyclingabout.com/why-impossible-steel-frames-more-comfortable-than-aluminium/
Still remember it like it was yesterday -- my father taking my brother and me one Saturday morning to the bike shop to buy our first bike (technically it was our second bike, our first bike was a tricycle from Woolworths bought by our grandmother on my mother's side).
ReplyDeleteIt was a Raleigh Chopper. A 3-speed mean machine. What a bike it was!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raleigh_Chopper
Bikes then, like cars, were cool. Today, duller than a butter knife.
Nothing is stopping you from buying and riding a cool bike.
ReplyDeleteI'm always recommending cycling to people. Just outside your front door you can go and have enormous fun,and it's so inexpensive, apart from the bike. I'm lucky where I live because of the countryside.
DeleteBut everyone I know are too scared to cycle because of the traffic, but I've cycled all my life and think nothing of it, although busy inner London might be more daunting.
The English don't make bikes anymore.
ReplyDeleteThe Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia is a great place for cycling. No hills to climb (unless you want to) and plenty of quiet rural roads.
ReplyDeleteThe designers and manufacturers of bicycles certainly know how bicycles work
ReplyDeleteL
O
L!
Maybe these people don’t know how to describe a bicycle in some sort of equation type form... that I’ll give you...
But we certainly know how they work..,
As the other link you posted K, the frame isn't all that is to it, IMHO the frame stiffness does play a part but not anything like what wheels & tyres do.
ReplyDeleteI run a couple of road bikes, a (very upgraded) alloy frame/carbon forked Boardman that i use to commute (its a bit ship of Theseus as in the only original bits are the frame & forks, everything else replaced) that I run with 25mm tyres at around 85 PSI, and a full carbon framed Bianchi with 28 mm tyres (disc brake) running at around 75 PSI. I can't tell the difference running them like that and that is how it should be.
If you run an old steel frame with 23mm tyres at 110 PSI they will be uncomfortable compared to modern set ups.
As an MMT link when Bill did a talk in Brighton a few years ago I got to chat to him about cycling for 20 mminutes and wssvreally interesting ( K you did know about Bills cycling? he like all cyclists loves talking about it).
@Matt
ReplyDeleteThe vid is really about how bikes don't fall over when pushed when no one is riding them and not falling over. The title is misleading
@lastgeek
ReplyDeleteEngland does make bikes, just the same as China makes or doesn't make bikes
Truth is they are 'made' all over.
Take my above mentioned Bianchi Aria, frame designed in Italy, made in Taiwan.
Set it up with a Shimano groupset (mine is a 105 hydraulic disc brake)
Its designed in Japan and components made in China and South Korea.
Bits come together in Italy and then sent around the world where mechanics build yhe bike,where in that case is it actually made? Bikes are s really good example of modern supply chains that economists don't understand.
I'm guessing my Huffy bike from Walmart is made in China.
ReplyDeletePrice of the cheapest eBike in Canada is $800 - hasn't changed since last year.
ReplyDeleteTo get one below this price, you're probably looking at a conversion kit.
Huffy Everett+ 27.5" Women’s Comfort Electric Bike
Electric bicycles are the future.
One day I might have to have one.
DeleteIt’s rotational inertia Andy we covered it in sophomore physics...
ReplyDeletePrimer:
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/torque-angular-momentum/torque-tutorial/a/rotational-inertia
Or Maybe the bicycle just evolved from the apes by random chance mutation?
ReplyDelete