Driving on beach and told to let air out of my tires so we didn’t get stuck. It’s like I sort of understand but I don’t really?
In: Physics
Ever watch a slow motion gif of a drag racer launching? The tires are very soft. They wrinkle and buckle. This makes much more of the tire contact the pavement. Bigger area of contact means more traction. The crazy levels of power those cars produce would overwhelm standard tires. With normal tires, most of that power would be wasted. The tires would just spin and smoke.
The same thing happens when offroaders deflate their tires. The tire gets softer, the contact patch gets bigger and more grip, more traction is achieved.
At its extreme, say with rock climbers, the tire actually wraps around smaller projections in the terrain. It’s like the difference between dragging a rock toward you with a flat palm or actually grabbing it to slide it towards yourself.
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