Bike Girl has often wondered what life would be like if she one day woke up and had turned into a car. One of Bike Girl’s loyal readers has sent her some quite amazing Math to help her figure it out.
This particular Math purports to calculate the efficiency of a cyclist as compared to a car. While Bike girl has no intention of fueling her bike rides with gas, she was interested to find out how man Miles Per Gallon she would get if she suddenly woke up one day and had transformed into some sort of science fiction car/cyclist hybrid.
Bike Girl immediately plugged in her weight, and a reasonable touring/commuting speed of 12 miles per hour. Using complex Math, the widget calculated Bike Girl would get 979 miles per gallon!
Intrigued, Bike Girl tried again with a quicker pace of 16 miles per hour, thinking surely her efficiency would improve.
WRONG!
Bike Girl’s efficiency actually dropped to 809 miles per gallon.
Now surpassing mere intrigue, Bike Girl’s fascination with the calculator grew. She moved the miles per hour back to 12, and entered her Pre-Cyclist weight. (Bike Girl was once a more voluptuous protagonist than she is now.) Only 930 miles per gallon. It turns out shedding a few pounds increases efficiency!
Try it Here
To read more about Bike Girl's tendency towards all things nerdly, click Here or Here or Here
This particular Math purports to calculate the efficiency of a cyclist as compared to a car. While Bike girl has no intention of fueling her bike rides with gas, she was interested to find out how man Miles Per Gallon she would get if she suddenly woke up one day and had transformed into some sort of science fiction car/cyclist hybrid.
Bike Girl immediately plugged in her weight, and a reasonable touring/commuting speed of 12 miles per hour. Using complex Math, the widget calculated Bike Girl would get 979 miles per gallon!
Intrigued, Bike Girl tried again with a quicker pace of 16 miles per hour, thinking surely her efficiency would improve.
WRONG!
Bike Girl’s efficiency actually dropped to 809 miles per gallon.
Now surpassing mere intrigue, Bike Girl’s fascination with the calculator grew. She moved the miles per hour back to 12, and entered her Pre-Cyclist weight. (Bike Girl was once a more voluptuous protagonist than she is now.) Only 930 miles per gallon. It turns out shedding a few pounds increases efficiency!
Try it Here
To read more about Bike Girl's tendency towards all things nerdly, click Here or Here or Here
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3 comments:
Using "Nerdly" is a kind of arbritrary term; it's also relative. I know many people who are "nerdly" than you are, in all aspects of math, cycling, and I would say life in general.
As far as mpg, I'm not really concerned with that unless I'm commuting to work, which=no gas. Other than that if it's not watts/kg then I don;t need it!
Cool Blog.
Dave
The thing that surprised me was that if someone had asked me before whether or not I thought I'd be more efficient tooling around at 10-12 mph on a beach cruiser, or 14-16 on a road bike, I'd have bet money on the road bike.
But if I'm on a 35 lb. cruiser doing 11 mph, I'm getting about 639 mph on the flats. On the 20 lb. bike at 15 mph, I'm only getting 597 mph.
My guess is that as soon as you account for hills, they even out, and then the road bike passes up the cruiser for efficiency. Still, both are over 10 times more efficient than a Prius.
It should also be mentioned that there's folks that argue about whether or not a vegetarian in an SUV is more efficient than a carnivore on a bike because of the resources it takes to grow a cow for slaughter. Evidently, they don't eat squirrel.
Thanks for the shout and cheers!
yes I ditto Dave.
I like your posts, nice blog - I found it by Bike Date. will visit often :D
greetings from SF/
xo.meli
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