Physics and Cycling

Will called me the "worst scientist ever", because I get excited when data fits my hypothesis. And when poorly-fitting data turns out to have been improperly measured.

Will, who majored in Physics at the Ivy League school which he attended, seems to forget how ridiculous his major is. Let's remind him.

A cyclist has to overcome all sorts of resistances in order to progress. There's the wind, there's gravity, and there's friction, to name a few. A quick glance at the physics of cycling lets us relate all of these resistances to the speed of the cyclist in order to calculate his power output.

From AnalyticCycling.com:
P / v(t) - ½ A C_w ρ v(t)² -
(m_r + m_b + m_fw + m_rw) C_rrg -
(m_r + m_b + m_fw + m_rw) Grade g -
C_x0fw ρ v(t)² π d_fw² / 8 - C_x0rw ρ v(t)² π d_rw² (1-RS)/ 8 =
(m_r + m_b + m_fw + m_rw + 4l_fw / d_fw² + 4l_rw / d_rw²) a(t)

Not so simple, is it? Nobody ever said physicists are dummies. Awkward, pompous, smelly jerks, maybe, but certainly not dummies.

Among physicists' noteworthy accomplishments, such as the nuclear bomb and proving the existence of black holes, is a sleight-of-hand maneuver that would make Houdini jealous. They took the above equation, did a little hand-waving, and reduced it to this:

P / v(t) - v(t) - 2 g - π / 4 v(t)² = 8 a(t)

(which, if AnalyticCycling would let me, should further reduce to P / v(t) - v(t) - v(t)^-2 - 1 = a(t), but it won't, so forget it)

I don't have a Power Meter, because I don't have $600 to spare. What I do have is a watch and an internet connection. I recently did a 1 kilometer time trial up Washington Rd. Thus, my average speed, and my weight, are the only measurements I know.

In the grand tradition of not-at-all-lazy physicists, I will set everything else equal to 1. Thus, we find, using AnalyticCycling's online calculator:

My power output (albeit for less than 5 minutes) was...

drumroll...

wait for it...

6,810 Watts.

That's over 100 Watts / kilogram. 15 times higher than Lance's! ProTour, here I come.




Using numbers based in reality, as would any good scientist, we find that my Watts / kilogram wass...

my own business. Suffice it to say: ProTour, here I do not come.

My next post will consist entirely of pictures of various dinners I've consumed. In conclusion, up your nose with a rubber hose, Will.