Monday, August 3, 2009

Bike with Square Wheels

Ride a bike with round wheels and it rolls smoothly on a flat road (i.e., the axle remains level). Can you get a bike with square wheels to roll smoothly on a road of some other shape?

Surprisingly, yes. A road made up of inverted catenaries will do the trick! A catenary is a portion of a cosh curve (higher Mathematics). Figure below shows how such a bike would roll.

(Source: Mudd Math fun fact)

1 comment:

  1. The same way roads for Tanks r created....... i've seen that....

    ReplyDelete

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