Why regular bike allows you to increase your speed and effective range by several times despite having no motor?
In: 0
A bikes effective range is limited by your feet and depending where you live some super light race bikes which can go really fast are not necissarily road legal..depending where you live anyway. The police will generally stop you with these if they have a problem with it.
And e bikes don’t exceed certain speeds and are really just normal bikes with a battery & electric motor assisting you… these generally do not need a license plate either as it is just like those e scooters you can lend in some towns.
A bike is extremely efficient at converting leg motion into speed, far more efficient than running.
Define “range”. Is it when you get tired, when you stop, or how fast it is possible to go in a set period of time?
It’s the idea of mechanical advantage. To move your mass from point A to point B takes a certain amount of energy no matter what, but if that energy is spread out over more time, then the power required (energy/ time) can be less. Like the difference between a mile sprint and a leisurely stroll.
The gearing of a bicycle allows you to adjust how much power you’re putting into your movement. Couple this with the fact that bicycles can coast on downhills, and you have a much more efficient means of distance travel.
Mechanical advantage. It puts you on wheels, the most important aspect as that allows you to maintain momentum (see skates or roller blades for other examples) and it uses a mechanical chain gear and chain system to, in practice, multiply the forces you input into the pedals.
If you look at things like pulleys, or levers, a bike’s chain and pedals behave somewhat similarly. They leverages as much mechanical advantage as can be fit into a system in order to be efficient while usable by people.
So, you know how cars and bikes have gears that change how energy is distributed? Well, those are literal gears. Go lool at a bike and you will notice it uses gears.
Google’s answer to “How does a gear mechanism work:” Gears are wheels with teeth that slot together. When one gear is turned the other one turns as well. If the gears are of different sizes, they can be used to increase the power of a turning force. The smaller wheel turns more quickly but with less force, while the bigger one turns more slowly with more force.
If mechanical advantage was the only answer then running on stilts would be effective. In fact it is fast over short distances but tiring over any meaningful distance.
The secret of a bicycle lies in its separation of two functions: holding your weight up and moving you forward. When running you have to transfer your weight to the ground using the body parts that propel you forward. This is tiring because you constantly need to lift yourself up, in effect running is a series of dynamic hops upward and forward. You have springs in your legs (your Achilles’ tendons) to absorb energy of landing and return it on liftoff, but this is not entirely efficient.
In contrast when cycling your weight is transferred through the saddle and frame, leaving your legs free to provide forward motion. You can see this separation clearly in that it takes no effort to coast on a bicycle, whereas gently slowing down while running still requires energy.
Mechanical advantage helps with speed: a kick scooter is good for range but limited in top speed because you can only kick so fast.
Walking and running are not very efficient because a lot of the muscle “energy” is used for balance, support of body weight and there is inherently a bit of up and down motion of the body (which is wasted energy since the desired motion is sideways).
On a bicycle there is much less wasted energy on the balancing and weight support part and the rotation of the wheel is much more effective at imparting motion with less “up and down” wastage.
The bicycle thus maximizes the muscles total effort towards the desired motion while minimizing unwanted use of effort.
Latest Answers