fuckyeahmath:

Ride a bike with round wheels and it rolls smoothly on a flat road (i.e., the axle remains level). Can you get a bike with square wheels to roll smoothly on a road of some other shape?

Surprisingly, yes. A road made up of inverted catenaries will do the trick! A catenary is a portion of a cosh curve. Figure 1 shows how such a bike would roll.

All roads should look like this. Let us end this crazy round wheels business!

1:05 pm  •  19 November 2009  •  40 notes