A question of physics
Oct. 9th, 2008 01:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenI have a question to test the assembled wisdom herein.
Back in March, I went snowboarding in Chamonix with an old mate of mine from Uni. He's an astrophysics grad and former biker, so he's a smart chap and knows his stuff. (Although he's a skier, not a 'boarder. ;) )
We had a highly entertaining argument spanning several days, with him trying to convince me using reasoning, diagrams and equations. I countered with thought models and so on, but neither could convince the other.
We were talking about motorcycle handling, with reference to trikes, cars and whatnot, but mainly of bikes. What started it was a comment of mine, something along the lines of "of course, on a track, with sticky tyres, you could corner much faster..."
He stopped me. He takes issue with this: he maintains that a motorcycle's cornering speed is limited by its weight and the angle of lean and nothing else; that the maximum cornering speed is a question of the angle of lean.
I maintain that stickier tyres exert more friction on the track, and that thus, a bike on sticky race compound slicks on a dry track covered in Shellgrip or the like will have a higher cornering speed than it would on ordinary tyres on the road.
I can't reproduce his back-of-a-paper-bag physics models on CIX. My models were, for instance, to consider a pendulum going round in circles around a pivot; that a stronger anchoring cord would allow a pendulum of given unit weight to travel faster, the limiting factor being the strength of the tether.
He was happy enough to concede that a car on race compound on the track would corner faster, as it doesn't lean, but as far as he is concerned, this does not apply to bikes.
I think this is ludicrous; that racing bikes on the track corner dramatically faster than one could ever do on the road on Tarmac.
In the end, he got terribly offended and upset that I wouldn't believe him, when his physics degree meant he knew better than I did. I reckon though that his model is faulty for not including friction.
What do the big brains of LJ think? :¬)
Back in March, I went snowboarding in Chamonix with an old mate of mine from Uni. He's an astrophysics grad and former biker, so he's a smart chap and knows his stuff. (Although he's a skier, not a 'boarder. ;) )
We had a highly entertaining argument spanning several days, with him trying to convince me using reasoning, diagrams and equations. I countered with thought models and so on, but neither could convince the other.
We were talking about motorcycle handling, with reference to trikes, cars and whatnot, but mainly of bikes. What started it was a comment of mine, something along the lines of "of course, on a track, with sticky tyres, you could corner much faster..."
He stopped me. He takes issue with this: he maintains that a motorcycle's cornering speed is limited by its weight and the angle of lean and nothing else; that the maximum cornering speed is a question of the angle of lean.
I maintain that stickier tyres exert more friction on the track, and that thus, a bike on sticky race compound slicks on a dry track covered in Shellgrip or the like will have a higher cornering speed than it would on ordinary tyres on the road.
I can't reproduce his back-of-a-paper-bag physics models on CIX. My models were, for instance, to consider a pendulum going round in circles around a pivot; that a stronger anchoring cord would allow a pendulum of given unit weight to travel faster, the limiting factor being the strength of the tether.
He was happy enough to concede that a car on race compound on the track would corner faster, as it doesn't lean, but as far as he is concerned, this does not apply to bikes.
I think this is ludicrous; that racing bikes on the track corner dramatically faster than one could ever do on the road on Tarmac.
In the end, he got terribly offended and upset that I wouldn't believe him, when his physics degree meant he knew better than I did. I reckon though that his model is faulty for not including friction.
What do the big brains of LJ think? :¬)
