Word: jonesism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Hardly anything could be simpler: you hop on, grab the handlebars, press down on a pedal and roll off. Indeed, it is so easy for most people to ride a bicycle that science has hardly bothered to answer a very obvious question: What gives the bicycle its extraordinary stability? Properly...
Easier said than done. First, Chemist Jones tested the common theory that the bicycle's front wheel acts like a stabilizing gyroscope. He attached a second front wheel, parallel to the first that did not quite touch the ground. It could thus be spun in the opposite direction of...
Hot Caster. Next, Jones investigated the notion that a bicycle's stability somehow depends on the position of the front wheel's point of contact with the ground. The rider, after all, usually steers instinctively in the direction of a potential fall, thereby moving the point of contact...
Next, Jones turned the front wheel 180 degrees so that its point of contact was farther behind the steering axis than it is in an ordinary bike. Instead of riding the bike himself, he simply pushed it off. "Incredibly," he reports in Physics Today, "it ran on for yards before...
Baffled, he turned for help to a computer. After analyzing many more unridable designs, he finally felt ready to build URB IV, an awkward-looking machine whose front wheel was four inches ahead of the normal position. The result was smashingly successful. Even when it was given a hard shove...