Bicycle are compound machines with many different systems that work in parallel. We can separate the machines that make up a bicycle into:
- the drive train (a complex machine)
- the braking system (a complex machine);
- a bicycle frame (a simple machine and a wonder of geometry).
An activity I play with my classes is to ask students, taking turns and drawing one line at a time, to convert the imagery below into a bicycle:
Class/group drawings have yielded the following: