8b: Checking Evaluations

Classmate Evaluation


Amelia

Robert Castro

8a: Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

http://www.physlink.com/Education/askExperts/ae288.cfm

The reason that you stay up on a bike is that angular momentum, like regular momentum, must be conserved if no external torques act on the object. Because angular momentum is a vector, not only must its magnitude be conserved, but also its direction. This implies that any change in the orientation of the object will change the vector for angular momentum. Therefore, tops stay up because the angular momentum wants to stay conserved in the same direction.


Paragraph with Ellipsis

The reason that you stay up on a bike is that angular momentum, like regular momentum, must be conserved if no external torques act on the object. Because angular momentum is a vector, not only must its magnitude be conserved, but also its direction. This implies that any change in the orientation of the object will change the vector for angular momentum. Therefore, [the bike will] stay up because the angular momentum wants to stay conserved in the same direction.


Paraphrase

A bike wants to stay up at speed because of gyroscopic forces or also known as angular momentum. If a person would hold a bicycle wheel on a axle in their hands a had someone spin the wheel they would feel the forces acting on the spinning wheel. The person would notice that there where no forces felt until the wheel is turned left, right or leaned. What this person is feeling are the gyroscopic forces. The wheel wants to stay in the upright position and when the wheel is leaned or turned the person is feeling the wheel trying to return to its straight ahead position. The straight ahead position is where the three forces acting on the spinning wheel are equalized.


Summary

A bike stays up because of the laws of angular momentum. Angular momentum is a vector and because of this the object's magnitude and its direction must be conserved. This means that any change in the object's manitude or direction will change the angular momentum vector. The reason the tire stays up is because angular momentum vector wants to equalize.

7b: Evaluating Sources

One website I found dealing with Gyroscopic Forces was on the webiste HowStuffWorks.com. The website is part of the Discovery Company which has an interest in the scientific community. The website has videos from university professors explaning the gyro forces.

The book that I found is writen by a engineer that rode motorcyles. He became interested in the forces that act upon a motorcycle during the ride. He explains the "why" with riding a motorcycle.

7a: Conducting Internet Research

Using the search engine that I was assigned, Viewzi, I did a search of Gyro Forces+Motorcycles on 3/16/09. I was able to get articles explaining counter steer at speed. Using Viewzi I was not able to find out how many hits total I had. Using Viewzi I was able to go through the hits and hide the pages that I didn't want so I was able to see only the sites that I was interested in.

5c: Rewriting Search Strings

Using the advice from my new favorite amature Quantum Physicist, Ryan, I did some more searching but looking up the cream of the crop, top of the line race bikes in the world. I was not able to get any information on, lets say, motogp bikes but I did bring up other styles of suspension. For the most part all motorcyle suspension is the same, mostly because they all have the same forces acting upon them. There are a few companies that tried different designs to try to smooth out some of those forces.

5b: Finding More Reference Articles and Books

I purchased another book on Motorcycle dynamics, which I believe is a better representation on what I'm trying to write about. The book I was trying to get was on backorder, which is not the end of the world because I already own a few books on the subject. Feeling a little down about the, not finding any periodicals problem, I did some asking around and I found a Motorcycle Suspension Engineer. I told him my situation and he was more than happy to point me in the right direction, as in renaming the title of my paper.

5a: Finding Periodical Articles

I tired looking up periodicals on the libary websites and I could not find anything pertaining to my topic. What I did find that was interesting was a collection of Alternative Energy articles that I spent some time reading. I found articles talking about the evolving technolgy on fuel cells and solar panels. When I recive my pre-destined failing grade in this class I will probably pick an Alternative Engery topic to write about. As the wise Homer Simpsons says, "Facts are meaningless, they can be used to prove anything that's even remotely true."