Why when you are riding a bicycle do you need to first turn/lean right to make make a left turn, and vice versa?
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Bicycles REALLY like continuing to go straight. Ever try pushing a bike off by the seat? It will remain upright and straight until it loses its momentum. To turn a bike, you have to break the bikes tendency to want to go forward. You accomplish this by preparing yourself and the bike to lean into the turn you want to take.
If you just turn the handlebars in the direction you want to go, you will have only turned that front wheel into a barrier for your bike to keep going forward. By turning the opposite direction a little bit first then turning back, you’ve created an opportunity for the lean you need to occur so that the forward momentum can be directed into the turn.
I haven’t ridden a bike in a while, but I used to quite a bit in university, and I can’t say I recall ever *needing* to lean the opposite direction before going into a turn. It might have happened occasionally as a byproduct of some other motion I was doing on the bike, but there have been many more times where I just leaned in the direction of the turn alone.
Could you elaborate on why you think this is necessary?
It’s called [counter steering ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countersteering?wprov=sfla1)
“To negotiate a turn successfully, the combined center of mass of the rider and the single-track vehicle must first be leaned in the direction of the turn, and steering briefly in the opposite direction causes that lean.”
You turn the handlebars right in order to lean left. Then you turn the handlebars left to maintain balance in the turn. Then you turn the handlebars left harder to bring yourself upright and end the turn. Most of this happens from a combination of muscle memory and the geometry of the bicycle’s steering, most people don’t even realize they turn the opposite direction to start the turn.
Leaning left is what allows you to make the left turn. By leaning left I specifically mean the position of your center of mass in relation to where the tires contact the ground, not the angle of the bike in relation to the ground. You can lean the bike quite significantly under yourself and still go straight, so long as you keep your center of mass directly above where the wheels contact the ground.
The physics principle that actually accelerates you left or right is called inverted pendulum.
Physics. If you try to turn without first moving the mass being suspended by two points of contact with the ground below to compensate for the lateral acceleration you will fall over.
Hold a string with your arm outstretched then spin. The dangling end of the string will move outward because of the acceleration it experiences going around a turn. Same thing happens to the person on the bike with its wheels being held in place by friction with the ground
(acceleration = (velocity squared)/(the radius of the turn))
I remember watching a video about this topic
They tried going straight without leaning; all fell.
apparently leaning to turn is a natural instinct we accumulate while learning how to ride a bike.
remember that you turn your handlebars in the opposite direction of the turn you want to make. When turning left, you have to turn the handlebars right. This is because of the gyroscopic effect of the spinning wheels. When you turn the handlebars right, the front wheel will naturally turn left due to the gyroscopic effect.
In its most basic form, you steer the front wheel to the left to make you “fall” to the right, then once “fallen” enough into the turn, you steer enough to balance you in the turn. To end the turn you steer the front wheel into the turn, this will make you “fall” out of the turn, then steer again to balance yourself.
IRL, there are several ways to do a turn where the bike angles will make this or that method more viable. Example: In MTB you lean the bike heavily into the turn while leaning your body out of the turn, this forces the edge of the tire to bite in the ground giving you a lot more grip (very nimble bike, can be shifted easily, bike geometry is made to make it fall in the turn instinctively). In road motorbike you lean the body in the turn, then the bike, but your body is always weighing the bike into the turn, while steering outward to make the bike fall more in the turn (heavy bike and high speed, needs a lot of force to win the wheel gyro effect and change the bike attitude, bike geometries are made to keep it upright and stable).
Bicycles act like gyroscopes.
Picture a spinning top, they don’t fall over as long as they’re spinning, that’s what a gyroscope is, the two wheels on a bicycle or motorbike act as gyroscopes once they’re spinning fast enough which is why a bicycle naturally wants to remain upright.
Another feature of gyroscopes is that any force you try and act on them actually happens 90 degrees later, so for example if you try and steer left on a bicycle, that force instead tips the bike right, and when a bicycle is on an angle it will turn inwards.
So what you do is you steer the wrong way to tip the bike over, and then use the lean to turn
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