fairfolio
Saved Projects

27.5" or 29" Rolling Friction vs. Agility

ISEF · 2017 Physics and Astronomy

Ziemba, Colton

Is this your project?

Overview

The purpose of this experiment was to determine which bicycle wheel diameter is quicker in straight-line trails and which is quicker in single track, complex terrain requiring maneuverability. Four different bikers competed against themselves in a series of timed runs alternating between 27.5 -inch and 29-inch wheels on otherwise identical Trek mountain bikes with fixed-gear ratios. The straight-line track was a 100-meter stretch of hard packed gravel, and the complex terrain was 100 meters of curving, sandy soil. The athletes rode each course six times, three with each diameter wheel, and times were recorded and compared by individual. Four bikers’ data was gathered and recorded in hard-packed straight line trails and complex terrain with curves. The 29-inch wheels consistently posted faster times on straight-line trails. On complex terrain, however the 27.5 inch wheels had the fastest overall average.

Working on something like this? See what's been done and what's still open.

Competition history

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Report a problem

Source: Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google