Other variations on the same question can be phrased as
•How Does a Bicycle Work?
•What scientific principles keep bikes upright?
•Why is it so easy to ride a bike once you have learned?
•Is there an invisible wall, as hinted by C. S. Lewis in Prelandra, (1944, p. 68) that prevents a bike from falling over?
The answers to these and varied questions can be either short or long. In China tourists are told a joke that a bike falls over “Because it is two-tired.”
A friend who is a retired professor of physics, University of Illinois, quipped that a bike works,
“Because you pedal it.”
These are some of the short versions. A somewhat longer version is provided by visiting the various sub-headings in this “Bicycle Science” section.
As a guide to this section, please be advised that it was written almost like a manuscript. Unless you are going for a specific result, our suggestion is that you start with “Intro” (introduction), and then move on down the line of sub-heading tabs from left to right.
The focus on this “Bicycle Science” section will be to present the almost three decades of bicycle related research (1983 to present) performed by Dr. Richard Klein at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.