Carl Fogel wrote:

While I was enjoying the current incarnation of the stand-or-hang
thread, I found myself wondering what the spokes and the rim will do
if you stick a wheel up in the air and hang a weight from the rim
section that would normally be the contact patch.

View the rim as an elastically supported beam, as has been suggested
here previously. The effect, on a hub anchored wheel, is the same but
opposite of its normal loading. The bottom spokes get a bit longer
and the others react the inverse of before, because the diameter of
the rim decreases slightly (making other spokes have slightly less
tension than initially).

Of course we can expect arguments why the load is hanging from the top
spokes from some quarters.

Jobst Brandt