Why do the back wheels of a cart go over a bump easier than the front wheels?
In: Physics
Does it? One reason could be more weight is carried on the fromt wheels.
Leverage. When the front wheels of a cart go up, the cart turns into a lever and the front wheels want to go up and back. Whereas the back wheels go up and forward because the cart is pivoting on the front wheels.
So pushing the back wheels of a cart up a bump is also pushing it forward.
I think it is because most of the weight of a car is in the front, so the front wheels have to do the most lifting.
Makes me wonder how it feels, driving over a speedbump in an electric car or in a sports car whith the engine in the back.
Because you already have the front wheels of your cart so it’s easier to pull your back wheels
If you’re talking about a push cart, it is because a component of the force you are pushing with is directed downwards. Since the rear wheels are nearly straight down from your hands, there is much less force pointing down.
It comes down to leverage, the wheels located closer to the force applied where you’re pushing the cart will have better leverage than wheels further away. Also the contents of the cart shift forward when you hit the bump from inertia, because the wheel is static and doesn’t move up and down, a combination of the inertia, weight, gravity of the contents force the front wheel to “dig in” to the groove of the bump, the same inertia, weight distribution will cause the rear wheel to be lighter because everything is pushing down on the front wheel. You can compare it to motorcycles because it is kind of what allows the motorcycle front disc brake to be so effective. Motorcycle geometry is such that when applying front brake all the weight gets loaded onto the front shock, the added weight helps with digging the tire into the ground adding stopping power. Because front tire is loaded, rear tire is very light and over applying the front break can send your rear tire in the air. For motorcycles they teach you when you go over a bump accelerate towards it, reason is it unloads the shock from the front and makes your front tire lighter when it runs over let’s say a 2×4
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