The Physics of the Bike

Please give this video a sec­ond to get going.

We have all seen or expe­ri­enced it. When trav­el­ing at the right speeds, bikes can prac­ti­cal­ly steer them­selves, remain­ing upright and defy­ing the pull of grav­i­ty. Physi­cists thought they fig­ured out this minor mys­tery long ago. But a new paper (read the PDF here) by Andy Ruina (Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty) and Jim Papadopou­los (Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin — Stout) chal­lenges the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom. This video, which comes to us cour­tesy of Sci­ence Fri­day, explains…

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