In article ,
Simon Brooke wrote:

Tim McNamara writes:

But you raise an interesting point, as over the years a number of
British bicyclists in this newsgroup have most vehemently and
even rudely refused to tolerate the notion that the bicycle wheel
stands on its lower spokes. I don't quite know why this notion
seems to be so hard for some to grasp Across The Pond, especially
when it's so simple and so demonstrable.

Simple and demonstrable, yes. Stand the wheel on the spoke, and the
nipple falls out, because the only thing that holds it in is
tension. What you're saying is that _less_ tension somehow
translates into load bearing. It does not and it can not, and, in
particular, the design of spoke nipples would not allow them to
take compression loads even if the design of the wheel allowed them
to. The hub is supported by the tension in the top spokes, which
hang from the rim. This, of course, tends to distort the rim out of
true, and this distortion is resisted by tension in other spokes.
The only spokes which are doing no work at all is the spokes which
_can_ do no work - because they've gone (relatively) slack. To
suggest that the wheel is standing on these spokes is a semantic
perversion of the most peculiar nature.

Erm, yet again- you might want to read the book. And learn something
about the dynamics of pretensioned structures under load.