Weight and the scientific method

RonSonic wrote:

Going uphill you had a higher
profile with yourself and bike tilted back as you were. It seems subtle, I know,
but we must be precise. Next time ride up the hill with a 650C wheel in front
and down with a 700C, that should compensate for the tilting.

Ah, excellent point. Because 80% of a cyclist's effort is put into
overcoming air resistance, my frontal profile could indeed have a
dramatic effect on my speed. I'm afraid I missed Ken's subtlety when
he stated the same thing, for which I apologize.

It occurs to me that the rocks in my shorts will also change my
aerodynamic profile.

RFM

RonSonic wrote:

Excellent work Fritz. It's good to finally see some actual science applied to
these machines.

I'm a little concerned about the apocryphal nature
of the cannonball story, as well as the lack of a
statistically significant sample size in Fritz's
experiment. I think the only way to garner truly
valid results is to run these experiments in
freefall, and repeat the trials until I can attain
a 95% confidence interval. Fortunately, I work in
a ten-story office building. What I intend to do
is ride my bike off the roof of the building and
record the total time of descent, both with and
without rocks stuffed in my shorts.

My findings will be submitted for peer review and
potential journal publication, perhaps posthumously.


Larry Coon
University of California