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Earshot Presents recently posted a tongue in cheek “study” of the correlation between high school physics grades and the number of experiences riding a fixed gear bicycle, coming to the conclusion that those that went so far as to own a fixed gear had no hope in passing their next physics exam. “The data suggest that a weak understanding of momentum and properties of moving bodies more generally as measured by High School physics grade is positively associated with number of times one has ridden a fixed gear bike.” Classical mechanics is so 17th century.
Must be why they do not understand the concept of brakes.
Very fun! I’m thrilled that so many kids are biking these days – when I taught bike safety for the LA school system in the late 90′s, bicycling was about as uncool as a kid could get. Now all the cool kids are riding, and I’m hoping that’s the start for the rest of the city.
Amusing “survey”.
The trick is to do the study at an university. There almost all the physics faculty and many of the students ride (at least where I went).
maybe they are to worried about their wheels matching their attire.note i rode a my track bike or my road bike to school everyday in high school and passed physics class. but that predates mall bought bicycles
Excuse me? Some of us fixie riders do have bikes equipped with brakes. Though I rarely use my mechanical hand brakes on most days. I still use my front and rear brakes for the “oh shit! The dumbass in front of me on the cellphone slammed on his brakes and there is no room to pull an emergency counter-steer into the next lane.” stops. I also have a rear brake to assist my legs’ back-pressure to keep my speed under 37 mph (or more accurately my cadence under the RPMs in the high hundreds) on those steeper than shit mountainous hills you find occasionally in west Austin.
I under-stand very well the concept of brakes. And I prefer avid mechanical disc brakes whenever I have a little flexibility in choice of braking systems on a bicycle. Also 99.9% of the time my fixie’s rear brake is just pointless dead-weight even in the rain. I left it on since i’m a 5 foot 2 inch 111 pound woman and I have trouble slowing my fixie down on insanely steep downhills.
“I’m chelsea, I’m going to tell everyone how fast I ride and how much better I am at riding my fixed gear then everyone else.”-Chelsea
Ok so some of us brakeless fixie riders may not know physics too well but that’s only because we spent all our time in Art College learning how to spray paint an aerospoke in a colour that had never been seen before and how to design a totally asymetrical hair cut!