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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2023

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  • The quantified scientist would be the first to tell you that he’s making these determinations on a sample size of one (sometimes he gets a friend to help, and then it’s a sample size of two).

    So maybe what ever tech you’re thinking about will work for him and not for you or vice versa.

    Unfortunately, it’s kinda like the wild west out there. The tech changes so fast that no one has time to do a big study and figure out what actually works.










  • The answer to width is rolling resistance.

    Tires stick to road which is great for accelerating and breaking, but it makes maintaining your top speed harder. This doesn’t matter if you have a big engine, but it makes a difference if you’re cycling.

    For a road bike, you want to minimize the contact area of the tire with the road so you have very narrow tires and inflated a lot so that they don’t deform much under your weight.

    The type and width of tires changes depending on what you’re riding on. For off road you have wide knobbly tires that will catch in mud and push you forward. For riding on a beach you have very wide smooth tires for traveling over sand.

    The diameter is about stability. If you have small wheels turning fast it effectively lowers your center of gravity due to gyroscopic effects (this is a massive over simplification of the physics) big wheels turning more slowly results in a higher center of gravity, which is more stable.

    Cars have four wheels and don’t need to care about this.