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[–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

ls this showing actual measurements or simulations?

Either way: Pretty cool, order within chaos.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    The source of the order is pretty apparent. Bicycles (and other tandem two-wheeled vehicles like motorcycles, etc.) are self balancing as long as they're moving forward. This is due to a combination of gyroscopic effect as well as the offset of their front wheel relative to the steering axis. They stay upright by allowing the front wheel to meander back and forth in a regular pattern. Insofar as I can figure from a lifetime of riding bicycles and motorcycles, the length of the "wobbles," i.e. forming the peaks in sine wave pattern above are not influenced by speed. Rather, they're some multiple of the distance between the front axle and steering stem. The frequency at which they occur relative to time is of course directly proportional to speed, which is why when you get into such a tank-slapper on your motorcycle at 65+ MPH you're likely to eat shit. But the distance on pavement per wobble remains roughly constant.

    This self stabilizing effect is going on all the time and in fact even if you're riding your bicycle in what you might think is a straight line, it's keeping itself balanced by wobbling back and forth minutely at this same frequency. If you try locking the stem on a bike solid, e.g. by cranking down the stem nut until the handlebars won't move anymore, you'll find it nearly impossible to ride even in a straight line and completely impossible to steer -- even if you try to do so by leaning.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    That truly is beautific

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  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I wonder how they plotted the paths- whether it was digital sensors, something more analog like chalk on the wheels, an overhead camera...

    Whatever it was, it made for a beautiful plot!

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  • 38 comments in c/dataisbeautiful@lemmy.ml view that post
    [–] 40 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It looks a lot like the inverse of flow visualization with smoke or liquid. I guess that's not coincidence?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Not a Physicist, so guessing a little. Both seem turbulent/chaotic systems that rely on the previous state. Each part of a dynamic flow/bike trajectory are small fractals of the initial instability/configuration. A bike is designed to steer straight - counter-steering - while moving, so it is unstable around the line/curve. On the other hand, fluid tend to become unstable at the slightest disturbance and if pushed forward, goes into a oscillating state that breaks up into eddies. I would guess that the bike's forward instability gets exponentially higher at lower speeds, and the bike trajectory lines is not pushed forward as with moving fluid above, so the bike shows another turbulent/chaotic fractal system with a different starting configuration. ..I think ;-)

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

    If this is a Rorschach test, I'm seeing Victorian pubes

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    it's unexpectedly symmetrical, although i guess the "harmonic" of the bicycle explains that.

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

    Symmetrical up/down? Or do you mean almost periodic right to left?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    well since it's a top-down diagram i guess you can say up/down. but right/left is probably more accurate.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I don't know. I expect it to be symmetrical in that direction. Why should it behave different tilting left than right? It being periodic is much more unexpected to me. It makes sense but, without really thinking about it, I would have expected it to be more chaotic.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    It's entirely expected. The anomalies are going to be on the furthest left and right; Bikes that fall down right away or ones that stay up longest. The average would be the densest area - bikes that performed "okay." The symmetry is also an expected function with the only options for the wheel to turn being left or right.

    If these were not standardized releases, meaning, the energy used to push the bike varied from one to the next - say, because a person was pushing them and not a machine with a defined load - then it explains the short vs. long distances, however that would be normalized even with a predefined load and look similar to this... just bigger distances.

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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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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Why does this look like my hair

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    I want to repost this but make the title

    Paths of 800 unsuspecting bicyclists being pushed until they fall over

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Neat. How well controlled was the push—did they push them or did a machine?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The upper half has more circular tracks. Wonder if Coriolis forces caused the minor differences.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    A personal art project from the ward.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    That is quite obviously my ear hair.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    800 of the same bicycle

    if it was 800 different, you'd get a lot more noise

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    But how was the bike pushed? Was it pushed by an imperfect human, or by some sort of contraption?

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    So it's worthless? Not sure how to value virtual simulations of real world physical behaviour when it's used to show something cool.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Only because it is simulated? Pushing the same bike 800 times with the same force mechanically and measuring it doesn't seem to me to net any more applicable knowledge.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's pretty impressive that they pushed the bicycleIt's pretty impressive that they pushed the bicycle to the right 800 times and half the times it went left instantly.

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