Engineering Genius or, uh...?

Michael Baldwin said:

..we can only hope that 100 years from now somebody will say, "Hey
guys, look at this goofy idea!" and someone from the crowd will ask
"What did'ya find now Fogel?"...

Well, at least four (4) people on this newsgroup may beg to differ.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"And never forget, life ultimately makes failures of all people."
- A. Derleth

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> [email hidden] wrote:
>> Somehow, these just seem wrong to me:http://active-spoke.com. Any
>> thoughts from you engineering types?

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[email hidden] wrote:
> Pure snake oil. "A concept roadies should find intriguing", because
> we've all become convinced that our massive accelerations make
> rotating mass relevant. This idea of spinning weights that move in
> and out from the axis of rotation shows up periodically in claims of
> perpetual motion machines. On the surface, it sounds almost
> plausible. It should take less work to accelerate the wheel with
> lower rotating mass than it does to decelerate the wheel with higher
> rotating mass. The hitch is that if the light wheel and the heavy
> wheel are the same wheel energy has to be conserved and the whole
> thing washes out, because the work done to move those weights in and
> out is not negligible. The end result is a 10oz per wheel weight
> penalty that is not quite offset by the accompanying wallet lightening.

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I agree, but there is the slight difference that the type of
resistance encountered by the cyclist differs depending upon how fast
and thus how much wind resistance is. Low wind resistance when going
slow with low inertia, high resistance (as a percentage and absolute)
when going fast with higher inertia. But if there is any net positive,
I'm sure it is so miniscule that it is more than cancelled by the
extra weight.

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Like the weight penalty, the wind drag will be greater in all cases
than if the weights and springs were simply left off the wheel.
Sticking junk on individual spokes isn't going to reduce turbulence.
In fact, the aero drag is likely to slow the bike down more than the
slight weight penalty.

Quoted message said:

I didn't mean the wind drag from the gizmo. I meant the inertia is
"given back" when you need it, when wind resistance for the total
rider/bike combo is high. It's still a zero sum game, but the
conditions a rider needs to overcome are different when the energy is
put into the system than when it is taken out.
Up a hill adding 0.5% effort adds a certain speed gain and thus time
advantage. Adding 0.5% more effort on a descent does not result in the
same speed gain. But maybe this gizmo allows the (some tiny amount)
extra effort put in when it is easy to do so, to be taken out when it
is hard. Since this system saps the 0.5% on the way up, it doesn't
help there, but it may give it back when it makes a difference, thus
increasing the overall speed.
I'm certainly not ordering any, but it may not be 100% BS.

Sorry, think that through. It's 100% BS.
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Jan 29, 5:15 pm, "Leo Lichtman" <[email hidden]>

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<[email hidden]> wrote: (clip) There's a claim here that at some

speed> the energy you put into the system gets magically multiplied, and you

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go faster up and down. That's not 100% BS. It's at least 112%.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I don't think that's the claim. The claim is that in some way you can bank
some of your energy. and draw it out at a time when it will do you more
good. I don't think these spoke weights are the way to do it, but the
principle is what we're arguing about. Let's say you're going down hill at
about 50 mph. Using all the power you can muster, you probably could not
add l MPH to your speed, because the power goes up as (I think) the cube of
your speed. Suppose you had a big clock spring you could wind up while
coasting downhill. If you draw this energy out when you are struggling up a
hill at, say, 5 mph, you would get less tired, or go faster. If you went 1
MPH faster, this would reduce your uphill time by 20%.

Please don't tell me this is not practical--I already know that. We're
discussing the principle.

There is a conservation law that says you can't get out more than goes in,
so BS is limited to 100% <G>.

Well, it's not wholly impractical. What you're describing is often
accomplished by a flywheel. It slows you down by banking kinetic
energy when you're going fast and speeds you up by releasing it when
you're going slow because a finite amount of energy is best expended
at a constant speed. The spokey peddlers are trying to convince us
that their flywheel winds itself up at no cost to you when the weights
move outwards.

BS, by the way, is governed by entropy. We can always get more than
100% if we're willing to sacrifice intelligence for it.

Quoted message said:

Somehow, these just seem wrong to me:http://active-spoke.com. Any
thoughts from you engineering types?

Aside from basic problems of physics as discussed elswhere in this
thread, the testimonials seemed a little strange to me.
But I now note this photo:

http://beta.velonews.com/photo/71637

It is plausible that the wheel shown is fast and is the reason for
Dirk Friels (claimed) excellent TT, but I'll bet it isn't because
of the "ACTIVE" spokes.

DR

DirtRoadie said:

Quoted message said:

Somehow, these just seem wrong to me:http://active-spoke.com. Any
thoughts from you engineering types?

Aside from basic problems of physics as discussed elswhere in this
thread, the testimonials seemed a little strange to me.
But I now note this photo:

http://beta.velonews.com/photo/71637

It is plausible that the wheel shown is fast and is the reason for
Dirk Friels (claimed) excellent TT,  but  I'll bet  it isn't because
of the "ACTIVE" spokes.

DR

The other thing that comes to mind is that they seem to be marketing
them to "serious" time trialists. At the time trials I've been to, the
stronger riders are almost always using either disk or carbon tri-
spoke rear wheels. I've never seen someone time trial using round or
oval spoke wheels, which are the only ones that the Active-Spokeys are
available for...