Popular Mechanics magazine has given a Breakthrough Award to the Gyrobike, an invention that prevents bicycles without training wheels from tipping over.
Four Dartmouth College students developed the idea of putting a flywheel inside the rim of the front wheel. A drill is used to spin the flywheel, which keeps the bike stable under novice riders.
Hannah Murnen, Augusta Niles, Deborah Sperling and Nathan Sigworth (not pictured) are the students in Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering who developed the wheel design.
As explained at the Dartmouth website, the spinning flywheel uses precession as a stabilizing force. As a young rider begins to tip over, the front wheel veers from the vertical, but the independently spinning flywheel turns in the direction of the tilt and steers the bike under the rider's center of gravity.
Said Niles:
“Watching local children succeed in stabilizing themselves enough to actually allow the bicycle to teach them about balance-and watching them use that knowledge to ride for the first time-brought home what we had accomplished.”
The four have applied for a patent for the Gyrobike and are seeking a licensing agreement. The Breakthrough Awards are given for advances that solve problems, expand horizons or engage the imagination, says Popular Mechanics.
The desire to find a better way to teach children how to ride bicycles brings to mind the SHIFT, the tricycle that converts to a bicycle as the cyclist speeds up. The invention by three Purdue University designers was named as one of Time magazine's most amazing inventions of 2005, as well as other honors.
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