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.
In: 2
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.
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