Monday, June 06, 2005
How come it's easy to balance on a moving bicycle and not a stopped one?
Question: When we ride a bicycle it's pretty easy to keep upright, but when we stop or even slow down it's difficult to keep upright.
Hints:
Hints:
- There is more than one reason
- One reason is similar to why a spinning yo yo or rolling a hula hoop keeps in a plane
- The front wheel of a bicycle is mounted differently than the back wheel.
- One reason is that when we are moving we can make small corrections to the sterring and balance that way, when we are going very slowly it's hard to do this.
- Then spinning wheels have a gyroscopic effect which helps keep the bicycle balanced automatically. Since the wheels are very light this probably isn't a major effect.
- The front wheel is mounted at an angle. This has a variety of effects. One is that you can let go of the handlebars and it won't try and turn right away. But also if you lean to the left, because of this angle the wheel will tend to turn more into the curve and will cause the bike to right itself automatically. It's like a self correcting feature of the bicycle.
# posted by Scott Kirkwood @ 3:13 PM 
