We don't know how bikes work. From

As a scientist, I can confirm that when you bike in space it push you backward.

Huffy's first law of motion: a sick mountain bike at rest will stay at rest unless shredded upon at a dirt track behind a K-Mart

tl;dr scientists have a pretty good, if imperfect, idea of how bikes self-steer, and we know a lot more than we used to. researchers at cornell showed one of the biggest factors to bicycles' self-balancing is that the handlebars' center of mass is lower than the main frame's center of mass, causing it to fall faster when tilting and turn the handlebars. while it's true bikes aren't mathematically solved or anything, there's still a lot of research, and a lot's known. the craziest thing is that bicycles largely balance THEMSELVES, and self-correct if turned. humans are not needed. commonly cited are three reasons: 1. gyroscopic procession causes a vertical spinning wheel to turn in the direction you try to tilt it 2. the steering axis is tilted, so the front wheel touches the ground behind the steering axis and turns it back in the direction it's leaning (the caster effect) 3. the handlebars' center of mass is in front of the steering axis, so if the bike leans, the handlebars weigh it and turn it in that direction but there's a fourth reason i don't see many people mentioning, and a study from Cornell ("A bicycle can be self-stable without gyroscopic or caster effects") proved it with an elaborate bike that broke all the above rules and still self-steered (as in, NO human was involved): 4. the steering assembly has a much lower center of mass than the back frame assembly, which means that if the bike's falling, the steering assembly falls FASTER in that direction. this turns the handlebars and steers it back on track. a human on the bike only makes that center of mass difference more dramatic. i thought that was cool. there's a video by Veritasium about this that's really good, but i also skimmed through the study itself because it was interesting. scientists understand a lot more about this than people think--i think it's mainly just a lack of science communication that leads to an exaggeration like "the humble bicycles is a complete mystery to physicists" to proliferate. it's not that strange for humans' physical understanding of our tools to lag behind our mastery of our tools. how long were we cooking food before we figured out what fire is?

it's like how flies bee

Something something wheel go round, wheel no fall, wheel go round fast, wheel definitely no fall

Griff has a point. If we don't know how bikes work, how can we say with certainty that anything is or isn't possible?

i love how you can tell this is a bit they've been pulling on Griffin for his entire life

I love how griffin calls the thirty-mile large hadron collider ‘a million miles long’

for those who are genuinely curious: look up demonstrations of gyroscopic forces on a bike wheel (it's cooler than it sounds), watch stunt bikers (cool as is), and watch a video on steering vs leaning. we know exactly how these work to an incredibly precise degree. speed wobble is the only thing we haven't entirely figured out... maybe don't watch those videos.

I think it's magnets, magnets do it

Wait until he hears about planes.

“There’s something about *bikes* tho” needs to be a sound

Unicycle has entered the chat

I appreciate the effort with the dyslexic font

Pretty sure it's also true that dogs can't look up.

Justin telling Travis that scientists don't know how bikes work and then Traven just saying that as a fact is absolutely older-sibling energy lmao

Only us Dutch people know, it's our national secret together with our growth elixir formula

Everybody like "gyroscopic progression" in the comments did not go google this to try and figure out where justin was even coming from, and instead discover that he is not, in fact, wrong. while we know of a number of factors that play a role, we genuinely do not have a full understanding of how bikes work

Card on the spokes makes you go faster, scientists cant explain that either

I have listened to the adventure zone for years and This is the first time I saw their faces... Not what I expected.

The McElroys make me want to be a McElroy. They have a good time.

Me when the fire nation had tanks but didn’t know how hot air balloons worked

Scientist: "A lot of people misunderstand the concept of conservation of angular momentum." Justin: "Sciencers don't know how bike work."

We absolutely do know how they work.

I can tell you exactly how a bike works. Roughly near the seat is the center of gravity and when you add a human to that the weight is better distributed to the the pedals and front tire, because of the weight on the front tire the person now has a lot more control over the bikes balance and the pedals are so close to the center of gravity 1 so it's easier to create momentum 2 so the position of your feet are Roughly equally distributed allowing for tricks to be possible and if it's off just be a couple centimeters it makes many tricks much harder or near impossible for many. Tldr they are designed to give balance control to a person, weight distribution is a big factor of this. Same principle of why we can walk, but the way you do it is slightly different

No one tell Griffin, we also dont know why ice is slippery

Also Magnets. You ever wondered bout that? How they work?

bikes work through sheer force of will and a hefty amount of Believing in Yourself

I thought at first Justin meant mechanically, and thus as a joke, because we wouldn't be able to build bikes at all otherwise. Gyroscopically, yeah, that makes way more sense for not understanding lol

This video means such satisfaction for 4yo me - i was so scared of getting on a bike because i didn't know how it stayed upright and just because it worked for everyone else didn't mean that i would manage if i didn't know how.

BIKES 🚲

The harder you push a bike, the better the balance. The problem is calculating how tf it corrects itself over and over in an irregular fashion. It's impossible to predict frequency, reps, any of it.

What he means is HE doesn't know how bikes work. It's like siphons, we actually know so much about how they work that we understand that some aspects of it are extremely complex

I mean... No one's exactly sure how airplanes stay in the air... it's all just... theoretical...

it's centrifugal force

Don't tell Griff but we don't know how lithium batteries work either 🎉

Hes thinking of bees

Its called balance. What your thought need.

I am pretty sure veritasium did a show on this. We do know how bikes work. The front wheel moves to keep balance like a gyroscope.

Real ones know that they started this discussion during the donkey kong stream, not "off air" lol

Normalize referring to bikes as steeds

Humans are inherently not a stable structure. When standing upright, we constantly make adjustments so that we don’t fall. It’s just that we do this so often it becomes subconscious. Bikes just add some extra instability to this thing we already do, and like before, we learn how to stay upright despite it. That’s also why bikes have kickstands. As soon as we get off the bike, our muscles are no longer balancing it.

Humans really just put some sticks between two wheels, hopped on and never questioned it.

where do eels come from? apparently they finally figured it out

Mans is stating data 🤌

This bit made me unreasonably angry when I heard it on the pod. I could've sworn Justin is smarter than that. I could draw you a frickin force diagram, it's not that complicated.

I mean… it’s centripetal force

🚲🚲🚲🚲

I love Justin but sometimes his goofs make me pause and go outside to stare blankly at a tree for a while

Gyroscopic procession.

Why would you waste time discovering how exactly something works if its already so easy to get working? You want to put your effort into figuring out new shit.

I dont understand the issue, inertia keeps the bike up right. If i just stand up a bike and let my hand go its going to fall, if i give that bike a push it will stay upright for as long as the motion its in motion and the wheels are aligned. Whats the physics that are missing?

Wow, this podcast is SO boring

And here I thought after years of teaching free Bike lessons at my non profit co-op bike shop that it was all about center of balance and equally distributing weight so one side doesn't lean over. But I guess the 3 stooges committee knows better.

Fun Fact: it's not called the God particle cause it's super powerful. The guy who named it in a paper wanted to name it the Goddamn particle because it was going to be so goddamned hard to find, but his editor wouldn't let him