By: Jim Taylor
Two-wheeled
stability
Scientists who analyze these things say that the
Andean Condor, soaring in the upwelling air currents over the mountain ranges
of
But, those same scientists
assert, even the condor is surpassed by a human riding a bicycle on a level
road.
In my younger years, my bike
had one speed. To get up hills, I stood on the pedals and grunted. To stop, I pedalled backwards. If the chain came off – something it
did unpredictable regularity – I hurtled downhill until I fell off or hit
something. Hopefully, something soft, like someone’s prized hedge or flower
bed…
Today’s bicycles have 24 gears,
shock absorbing suspensions, and brakes that can pitch you over the handlebars.
Mathematical formula
Yet
all this development happened almost by chance. Just the other day, a group of
mathematicians announced that they had finally found a formula to explain a
bicycle’s stability.
You’ve all given a bicycle a
push and let it go, I imagine. Even without someone steering it, the bike will
coast along and stay upright. Until finally it slows down too much, and falls
over.
“Since the bicycle’s invention
some time in the 1860s,” wrote the
“In the journal Proceedings
of the Royal Society, a conclusive mathematical account of bike riding is
described in a dense 28-page paper by Professor Andy Ruina
of Cornell University, Jim Papadopoulos of Green Bay, Wisconsin, Jaap Meijaard of Nottingham
University, and Prof Arend Schwab of Delft University
of Technology, the Netherlands.”
A bicycle’s stability used to
be attributed to the gyroscopic effect of the rotating wheels. But that’s not
so, the authors found. The wheels on an untended bicycle, pushed off to fend
for itself, turn too slowly to keep it upright.
There are more complicated
elements to factor into a formula.
Just do it!
Of course, you don’t have to be a mathematician to ride a
bicycle. You just do it.
The bicycle demonstrates that
something can work, even if you can’t explain why.
For example, the ancient
Hebrews didn’t know that trichinosis is caused by tiny parasite called a
nematode. But they knew that eating pork had something to do with it. So they
avoided pork.
Biologists have developed
elaborate models to explain apparently self-sacrificing altruistic acts among
animals. But the animals don’t consciously calculate that defending eight
cousins is as valuable for protecting their family’s DNA
as defending your own offspring – or whatever the genetic formula is. They just
do it.
The Golden Rule – treat others
the way you would want to be treated – is found in every major religion. We
knew that it – or its negative formulation, don’t do anything to others that
you wouldn’t want them to do to you – generated social harmony long before
modern psychology could offer an explanation.
You don’t always have to know
why it works, to know that it works.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study
groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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