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[–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Bikes aren't symmetrical though, with the drive-train to one side, so you'd think there'd be a more noticeable bias in one direction. Guess it's a very minor effect.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I dug up the actual paper (Cook, 2004) and it turns out the bicycle was symmetrical... and, in fact, entirely virtual.

    The virtual bicycle used for simulation

    It's a plot of a computer simulation, rather than records from a real-world physical experiment.

    A bicycle is composed of four rigid bodies: the two wheels, the frame, the front fork (the steering column). Each adjacent pair of parts is connected with a joint that allows rotation along a defined axis, and the wheels are connected to the ground by requiring that their lowest point must have zero height and no horizontal motion (no sliding).

    So the simulation has a lot of simplifications from reality, and the picture tells us more about the simulation model than it tells us about the real world. It is a pretty picture, though.

    Here's the paper reference:

    Cook, M. 2004. It takes two neurons to ride a bicycle.

    (I couldn't get it from the Cook's Caltech site, but I found a copy elsewhere.)

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The interesting thing in this situation is that it curved at all.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    The fork is bend so the bike automatically counter-steers against gravity. As long as the speed is high and the wheels are spinning (centripetal/symmetry forces), it will tend to steer in a straight line. So the spinning wheel and the bend, makes the bike run upright. The bend has a name, but I forgot..

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