I’m not talking about long uphill and downhill, but more like little “bumps” that you find on any street. like getting on the sidewalk and then getting off to the road again would need me to pedal more vs when I just ride along a flat road on my bicycle. Why. If I come back to the same level of height eventually, the downhill should accelerate my bike as much as the uphill decelerate it, right?
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>the downhill should accelerate my bike as much as the uphill decelerate it, right?
It does.
Part of the acceleration is vertically downwards, and when you hit the ground you get accelerated upwards (aka. “stop going downwards), cancelling out that portion of the acceleration and converting the energy to heat.
If you had an arbitrarily big wheel, an infinitesimally small portion of the energy would be lost this way.
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