I’ve tried reading explanatory articles and I just don’t understand. Feels like a dumb question but they all say things like “shift down gear” and I don’t know what that actually physically means doing to the gears. Or, the articles assume I have a bike to look at and test it out on, which I don’t.
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Big gears have many teeth, small gears have few teeth.
When the pedals are connected to a gear with many teeth and the wheel is connected to a gear with few teeth a few turns of the pedals causes many turns of the wheel. This gives fast speed, but requires more force on the pedals.
To make the bike go slower while being easier to pedal, use a gear with fewer teeth on the pedal and more teeth on the wheel.
Confusingly, at the wheel, “a lower gear” means a gear with more teeth and “a higher gear” means a gear with fewer teeth. At the pedals, “a lower gear” means less teeth and “a higher gear” means more teeth. Not my fault.
If it’s shorter it takes less energy to make a full turn but also the same force from you reaches the ground without being wasted as much
The shorter the more force going to the ground
Think of two wheels rolling on a road The first wheel in 6 inches in diameter, and the second is 12 inches in diameter. If both wheels roll forward 10 feet, the smaller wheel had to rotate more times than the bigger wheen to get there. So more “work/energy” had to be put into the smaller one than the bigger one to go the same distance.
Now change those to gears. Put the small Geer on the pedal, and the big gear on the back wheel. I have to turn that small gear multiple times to make the big gear and wheel turn once. Because of this, the power needed to rotate the wheel once gets spread across the multiple rotation, making each of those smaller rotations easier. This example is like being in the low gear to go up hill.
Now flip the big gear to the pedal and the small gear to the wheel. I rotate the big bear once, which turns the wheel multiple times. So the energy needed for multiple turns of the wheel, gets compressed into a single pedal turn, making it more difficult. This is being in high gear, when you are up to speed and it is easier to do.
Torque!
Walk over to a door in your house. The hinge is like the hub of the wheel and the distance away from the hub represents the size of the gear on the back wheel.
Place your hand on the outer edge of the door and push it horizontally to swing the door about two inches. Easy effort, 2” movement. Now slide your hand closer to the hinge and again push your hand horizontally about 2”. Harder effort, much greater movement of the door.
Cheers and pedal on!
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