I was thinking about this the other day…skateboards are flexible, bike tires are bouncy. Why aren’t there “performance” skates with shocks? Wouldn’t that be better for your knees?
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Everyone asserting that pushing off would be less efficient needs to go back and check their physics knowledge. The entire point of a spring is that very little energy is lost in its action. In any case, the spring constant would be chosen to minimize compression on push-off. The answer is really that springs give no benefit in most uses of in-line or roller skates. Springs would be nice in in large wheel off-road inline skates, though.
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